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http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-434418
Some See Jenkins As Gold Mine on N. Korea
Friday July 23, 2004 9:01 PM / By ROBERT BURNS
Guardian
AP Military Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - What some U.S. military officials really want from Army defector Charles Robert Jenkins is not prison time, but information. The former U.S. sergeant who has resurfaced after decades in North Korea could provide one-of-a-kind intelligence about the secretive communist regime, including how it trains spies.
If taken to a court martial, the desertion case could jeopardize that chance, and the chance of learning about other Americans who, like Jenkins, disappeared for decades into reclusive North Korea, some observers say.
With a non-threatening approach or offer of plea bargain, they say, U.S. officials might get Jenkins to tell what he knows about the other Americans - three of whom are alleged to be fellow deserters from the U.S. Army.
On its face, the Jenkins case is about a young soldier who allegedly turned his back on the Army and emerged into the glare of international notoriety 39 years later as a frail fugitive from justice.
But there is more to it than that.
North Korea is one of the most closed societies in the world, and its efforts to develop nuclear weapons make it a high and urgent priority for American intelligence.
The case touches on a suspicion long held by U.S. intelligence agencies that a number of Americans were used - willingly or otherwise - by North Korea to arm spies with English-speaking skills so they could target American interests in South Korea and beyond.
A Bush administration official closely involved in the Jenkins matter said this week that the former soldier might improve his legal situation if he gave U.S. officials useful information.
On the other hand, if Jenkins acknowledges even an indirect role in North Korean operations aimed at U.S. intelligence targets, he might complicate his case, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the Bush administration has yet to decide how it will pursue the case.
The Pentagon has not ruled out that some American soldiers taken prisoner during the 1950-53 Korean War may still be alive in North Korea, and it has asked the North Koreans to address the matter.
Jenkins was on patrol in the Demilitarized Zone that separates North and South Korea when he disappeared in 1965. The Army says he left notes indicating that he was deserting, but family members and others have questioned whether he might have been kidnapped.
The Pentagon has said it will seek to take custody of Jenkins, now that he has traveled to Japan for medical treatment. Doctors treating him said Friday his condition is not serious and he does not need urgent medical care, but more tests will be carried out.
Some question whether pressing charges would discourage Jenkins from revealing what he knows.
Jack Pritchard, a retired Army colonel who handled Korea policy issues at the White House in the mid-1990s and later at the State Department, said it would be ``absolutely foolish'' to approach Jenkins with the threat of court martial. Without that hanging over his head, the 64-year-old Jenkins might be more open with information about life inside the reclusive North, Pritchard said.
Pritchard believes the Japanese government will stall in responding to a U.S. request to take custody of Jenkins, because it wants him to be able to remain in Japan with his Japanese wife, Hitomi Soga, and their two daughters. He stayed behind when the three of them were allowed to leave North Korea in 2002, apparently because he feared being extradited to the United States.
``Stalling any moderate amount of time by Japanese standards would allow him to stay'' there for the rest of his life, Pritchard said.
Suh Dae Sook, a retired political scientist and expert on North Korea, said he doubts the North Korean government would have put Jenkins in a position to learn much about its inner workings.
Jenkins may, however, be able to shed light on the language instruction the North Korean military has used in training people sent abroad to spy. Suh said those spies in some cases may have assumed the identities of kidnapped Japanese girls.
``The purpose of all this English education is mostly for spy operations in South Korea,'' Suh said.
A July 1989 U.S. military intelligence report said three Americans ``known among North Korean people as defectors'' were teaching English at the Reconnaissance Bureau Foreign Language College in Pyongyang, the capital. It said two of the three also had appeared in a North Korean movie.