- Paperback: 232 pages
- Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (Mar 10 2009)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0520259998
- ISBN-13: 978-0520259997
- Product Dimensions: 20.3 x 13.2 x 1.4 cm
- Shipping Weight: 249 g
- Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #285,192 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
"One of the most important and devastating accounts of life inside a totalitarian society."--Commentary
Product Description
In January of 1965, twenty-four-year-old U.S. Army sergeant Charles Robert Jenkins abandoned his post in South Korea, walked across the DMZ, and surrendered to communist North Korean soldiers standing sentry along the world's most heavily militarized border. He believed his action would get him back to the States and a short jail sentence. Instead he found himself in another sort of prison, where for forty years he suffered under one of the most brutal and repressive regimes the world has known. This fast-paced, harrowing tale, told plainly and simply by Jenkins (with journalist Jim Frederick), takes the reader behind the North Korean curtain and reveals the inner workings of its isolated society while offering a powerful testament to the human spirit.
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Most helpful customer reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars
A curiosity but not much more,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Reluctant Communist: My Desertion, Court-Martial, and Forty-Year Imprisonment in North Korea (Paperback)
Memoirs written by a reluctant American defector to North Korea who spent four decades in the enigmatic dictatorship - sounds like it should be a page-turner, but it isn't. Assuming the book is accurate - this isn't a cheap shot, but it is naturally difficult to verify many of the book's claims - it is still a flat and depressing read. To this reader, at least, it has little of the gripping, inspiring quality of many memoirs of survival under oppression. One simply gets the impression of a tragic figure who lived to regret a youthful error - lived to regret it for forty years, and glumly recounts his ordeal when it is finally over. This isn't Mr Jenkins' fault - he probably just needed a better editor or co-author, or perhaps would have been better to simply get on with his life as he understandably wishes to, rather than writing about this painful eternity.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
3.5 out of 5 stars (43 customer reviews) 25 of 26 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Through the North Korean Looking Glass and Back Again,
By William D. Geerhart - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Reluctant Communist: My Desertion, Court-Martial, and Forty-Year Imprisonment in North Korea (Hardcover)
A much longer review of this book will be posted on CONELRAD.com in the coming days, but I wanted to urge everyone with an interest in the mysterious world of North Korea to buy this book immediately. It is an unprecedented opportunity to read an uncensored account of what life is like in the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea by an American who lived there for nearly forty years. This is not a boring academic text. It is a riveting and, at times, mind-bending tale of endurance that is almost impossible to put down.
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
In a way, a happy ending,
By JYK - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Reluctant Communist: My Desertion, Court-Martial, and Forty-Year Imprisonment in North Korea (Hardcover)
I picked up the book out of curiosity and now am glad that I read it. Before reading the book, I thought of him as a strange man who defected to North Korea of all places, lived the good life as the token trophy, and now decided that he had had enough. I now feel more sympathy for his plight as he's revealed as a man whose momentary stupidity consigned him to forty years in hell. I was touched by his courtship of his wife, who was even more grievously wronged (at least he walked in with his two feet), and am glad to know that they are doing well in their new lives in Japan. A fascinating personal glimpse into the most isolated, brainwashed place in the world.
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Harrowing Tale of Desertion and Redemption,
By Rokodera - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Reluctant Communist: My Desertion, Court-Martial, and Forty-Year Imprisonment in North Korea (Hardcover)
The Reluctant Communist is the harrowing tale of Charles Robert Jenkins' life in North Korea following his desertion from the US Army in 1965. The story is bookended with an exposition of his life before desertion and his ultimate escape in 2003 and new life in Japan.On the book's cover, we see Jenkins staring out from the cover of the Reluctant Communist with a near-expressionless face that belies the gripping tale he tells inside. It's part biography, part confession, part travelogue, part political history, part prodigal son, and ALL thriller. The work brings to vivid life the struggle of the individual against a profoundly evil socialist state. Jenkins teamed with Jim Frederick of Time to write the book. The co-author manages to keep himself in the background for most of the story, limiting himself to the Foreword and to organizing Jenkins' tale into a coherent whole. To his credit, Frederick's discipline helps to retain the plain talk of Jenkins and lend the story an authentic voice, while still moving the story forward at a nice clip. Frederick, hailing from Time Magazine, stumbles once when he inserts gratuitous references to America's racist past in the passages leading up to the desertion. But, thankfully, this PC irrelevancy isn't enough to veer the story over the cliff, and is redeemed by everything that follows. The book could have benefited from a few maps, photos, and/or sketches to personalize the story. Without doubt, there is atill an untold but related story of Japanese abductees. One hopes Frederick will tackle that next, since he glosses over this here. But, these are quibbles in an otherwise gripping yarn. Do not miss this book! |
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