Charles Robert Jenkins
Biography
Charles Robert Jenkins was a U.S. Army sergeant from North Carolina who left a patrol and crossed into North Korea on January 5, 1965. He later said he feared dangerous patrols and deployment to Vietnam and mistakenly expected the Soviet Union to send him home. North Korea instead held him for nearly four decades, subjected him to forced ideological study and used him in propaganda and films. Jenkins left North Korea in July 2004 to reunite with his wife Hitomi Soga in Indonesia and Japan. He surrendered to U.S. military authorities, pleaded guilty to desertion and aiding the enemy on November 3, 2004, received a dishonorable discharge and a 30-day sentence, and was released after serving 25 days. He remained in Japan until his death.
The Army’s 2021 historical account identifies Colonel Denise K. Vowell as Jenkins’s court-martial judge and Captains Seth Cohen and Troy Wallace as trial counsel and assistant trial counsel. On November 3, 2004, he pleaded guilty to desertion and aiding the enemy. The adjudged six-month confinement was reduced to thirty days under the agreement; his recorded November 27 release remains unchanged. No new custody interval or recalculated total is added.
