This was actually left as a comment, but I have decided to bump this up into its own posting:

The University of California Press is pleased to announce the publication of:

The Reluctant Communist: My Desertion, Court-Martial, and Forty-Year Imprisonment in North Korea

Charles Robert Jenkins is a former United States Army soldier who lived in North Korea from 1965 to 2004. He now lives in Japan. Jim Frederick was _Time_ magazine’s Tokyo bureau chief from 2002 to 2006 and is now a _Time_ senior editor stationed in London.

http://go.ucpress.edu/Jenkins

“Jenkins’s straightforward presentation . . . conveys effectively both the hardships that he and other foreigners endured and the understanding and personal ties that he established. Readers have few opportunities to hear firsthand about life inside North Korea; those who follow current events will be intrigued by this story.”—_Library Journal_

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.

Full information about the book, including the table of contents, is available online: http://go.ucpress.edu/Jenkins

Note if you are interested in purchasing the book it is now available on Amazon.com where they have a pre-order sale for the book for $16.47.  No matter what you think of Jenkins this book should be a good read about what life is like inside of North Korea and I have already pre-ordered my copy. 

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