James Joseph Dresnok

James Joseph Dresnok ( 1941 - November 2016 ) was an American soldier who deserted to North Korea in 1962 . He was the last of a total of six deserters who still lived in North Korea. Here he worked for many years as an actor, translator and English teacher.

Service in the US Army

Dresnok was born in Richmond , Virginia . His parents divorced when he was ten years old. Dresnok lived at times in children's homes. One day after his 17th birthday, he joined the United States Army . From 1958 to 1960 Dresnok was stationed in the Federal Republic of Germany. According to an interview from 2008, Dresnok was already considering defection to a communist country - in this case the GDR - because he was dissatisfied with his service in the Army; Ultimately, however, he refrained from doing so because he feared that he would simply be sent back after an interrogation by the GDR authorities. After the end of his service in Germany, after the relationship with his American partner had failed, he was transferred to the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea , which he thought was the “most dangerous place in the world”. Allegedly, Dresnok, who at that time held the rank of ordinary soldier (" Private First Class "), had repeatedly violated the service regulations in South Korea and forged the signatures of his superiors on clearance certificates, so that in the summer of 1962 he was facing a military trial. To avoid it, Dresnok crossed the DMZ on August 15, 1962 as the second American soldier after the armistice of the Korean War .

Life in North Korea

Crossing the border and obtaining citizenship

In the first few years Dresnok lived with the American soldier Larry Abshier, who had deserted to North Korea three months before him. In the following three years, Jerry Parrish (December 1963) and Charles Robert Jenkins (1965) two other American deserters were added. The four Americans lived together in the Pyongyang area until the late 1970s , changing their accommodation several times over the years. In the first few years they were closely monitored and took part in numerous political training courses, in particular the Chuch'e ideology on which the North Korean state system was based .

According to Jenkins, who published an autobiography in 2005 after moving to Japan , Dresnok initially had no plans to stay in North Korea permanently. Rather, it was planned to travel to an East Asian country - possibly South Korea - via the embassy of a third country. When food supplies became more difficult in the autumn of 1966, Dresnok and the other deserters applied for political asylum at the Soviet embassy in Pyongyang in the winter of 1966/67 , which he was not granted. Dresnok then allegedly decided to become a “complete North Korean”: “Maybe they are of a different race, maybe they have a different skin color. But I'll fucking sit down and learn their way of life ”. In June 1972, Dresnok finally received North Korean citizenship.

Activities for the Labor Party of Korea

From 1973, Dresnok began to work for the Labor Party of Korea . From 1973 to 1976 he taught English at a military school in Pyongyang, but in Jenkins' view his strong southern accent made him of limited use. After the school closed, he translated American and English radio broadcasts into Korean . From 1978, Dresnok took on roles in numerous North Korean films. In the following years he appeared regularly in the series Unsung Heroes in particular . Here he played American military personnel.

Personal environment

Dresnok got two marriages in North Korea.

He married his first wife in 1980. According to Dresnok, she was “a mysterious Romanian who always refused to talk to him about her past”. There are suspicions that she was the Romanian artist Doina Bumbea , who disappeared without a trace in Italy in 1978. Dresnok never publicly announced the name of his first wife, Jenkins calls her "Dona" in his autobiography. The assumption is that Doina Bumbea was lured to Hong Kong by a North Korean agent under false promises and was held during a stopover in Pyongyang in North Korea. Dresnok's first wife died of lung cancer in 1997 in Pyongyang . With her, Dresnok had two children (Ted Ricardo and James Gabriel) who still live in North Korea.

In 1999 Dresnok married his second wife. It is the North Korean-born daughter of a Togolese diplomat and a North Korean woman who was left behind in the country by her father in 1967 when he fled North Korea. According to Jenkins, the marriage was brokered by the party organization at Dresnok's request. With his second wife, Dresnok had a son.

Dresnok died in 2016.

Dresnok's political position

Dresnok publicly stated several times that he sees himself as a North Korean and, unlike Charles Jenkins, has no intention of ever leaving North Korea. In a 2008 interview, he stated that he did not see himself as a traitor. He has lived in North Korea for more than 40 years; the country is his home. The government will take care of him until his last breath.

Cinematic reception

Dresnok's life story is the subject of the British documentary Crossing The Line , which was shot in North Korea in 2006. Both Dresnok and his son James Gabriel appear in it personally.

literature

• Charles Robert Jenkins , Jim Frederick: The Reluctant Communist: My Desertion, Court-Martial, and Forty-Year Imprisonment in North Korea , University of California Press 2008, ISBN 978-0520253339 .
• Mark Seddon: The Dear Leader takes care of me . Interview with James Dresnok in: The Guardian , September 9, 2008 (English).
• John Sweeney: North Korea Undercover. Inside The World's Most Secret State. Random House, London 2013, ISBN 9781448170944 (Chapter 17: The American Who Went To North Korea And Stayed)

Web links

Photo by James Dresnok

Individual evidence

1. ↑ A US soldier who defected to North Korea in 1962 has died, his Pyongyang-born sons say. In: The Washington Post, August 21, 2017, accessed January 3, 2018.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Seddon: The Dear Leader takes care of me . In: The Guardian , September 9, 2008, accessed December 13, 2017.
3. ^ Sweeney: North Korea Undercover , p. 303.
4. ↑ Jenkins / Frederick: The Reluctant Communist , p. 49.
5. ↑ Jenkins / Frederick: The Reluctant Communist , p. 52.
6. ↑ Sweeney: North Korea Undercover , p. 304.
7. ↑ Jenkins / Frederick: The Reluctant Communist , p. 58.
8. ^ Jenkins / Frederick: The Reluctant Communist , p.
   73.Sweeney: North Korea Undercover , p. 306.
9. ↑ ^{a b} Jenkins / Frederick: The Reluctant Communist , p. 133.
10. ↑ Chad O'Carroll: Jim Dresnok, American who defected to N.Korea in 1962, died in 2016. In: NK News - North Korea News. April 10, 2017, accessed April 10, 2017 .