Charles Jenkins in OhMyNews

This one is a must-read. The portrait you get is of a man broken in every way possible, yet almost inexplicably, alive. I’ll give you two quotes and let you read the rest yourself:

He believes there are more Americans in the country. “I know they’re there but can’t prove it. They’re left from the Korean and Vietnam wars. There is a place there where they got Americans farming.”

. . . .

Jenkins secretly indulged his love of American rock and roll by taking a screwdriver to his radio, which was fixed so it couldn’t be tuned. “I listened to and recorded Elvis, Beethoven, all kinds of music (broadcast from South Korea). I took a thick piece of plywood, nailed it to the bottom of the wardrobe and made a compartment. I kept my video cassettes there: James Bond, Die-Hard. I got them from foreign students. We watched the movies and hung a blanket over the window.”

Above all though, it is his graphic descriptions of poverty that stay in his mind. “We had rice and you’d wash it four of five times and it would still come out grey, it was full of bugs, rocks, four or five years old. You cook it and still break your teeth on the rocks. When I came to Japan I cooked my own rice and it was clean. I couldn’t believe it.”

In the 1990s Chinese and Russian support fell, sending the North spiraling into a deadly famine. Jenkins says he stopped eating sausages after discovering they contained rat meat and claims he was offered sexual favors in return for food. “My friend was a technician and he said: Take my wife. I knew if I did we would not friends no more.”

No one can say that this man hasn’t been punished for what he did.