translating English-language films for Kim Jong-il. Even this seemingly innocuous assignment was cloaked in secrecy, as Jenkins could listen to, but not view, the films he was working on. In addition,each movie was spliced into segments and mixed up with segments from other movies. “We really were just translating strings of words rather than anything that made sense, not enjoying a story,” he writes. Still, he gleaned enough to identify Kramer vs. Kramer and Mary Poppins . At night, the Americans would watch Western movies, tapes of which Jenkins was able to get from members of Pyongyang’ssmall diplomatic community. The most reliable was an Ethiopian named Sammy, a composition student at the Pyongyang music college. He and Jenkins established a routine in which they’d meet in a downtown Pyongyang restaurant with floor-length drapes in the windows. Sammy would hide the tapes behind the curtains, stroll by Jenkins’s table, and tell him things were “in position.” At night, the defectorswatched the movies with the curtains drawn and the volume low. Jenkins later developed a particular fascination with Michael Jackson after watching his Thriller video. In 1972, Jenkins was informed that, thanks to the benevolence of Kim Il-sung, he had been granted North Korean citizenship. “What if we don’t take it?” he asked. “Then you won’t be here tomorrow,” the cadre replied.
In 1978 theregime began pairing the defectors with women who had been abducted from a variety of countries. Parrish married a Lebanese woman named Siham Shrieteh, who had been lured to North Korea with three other women with the promise of secretarial jobs that paid a thousand dollars a month. The parents of one of the women had connections to the Lebanese government, which was able to free all four of them.But when Siham arrived home pregnant, her family sent her back to North Korea to live with her husband, Parrish. Abshier married a Thai woman named Anocha Panjoy, who was working as a masseuse in Macau when she was abducted. Dresnok married Doina Bumbea, a Romanian artist who had been lured from Italy with the promise of an art show.
* * *
In the spring of 1980, Jenkins was told the regimewanted him to teach English to a woman, to whom he would be introduced. He’d previously been assigned a series of cooks, with whom he’d been sexually involved, but this was the first time he was formally introduced to someone. At 10:00 p.m. on June 30, there was a knock at Jenkins’s door. He gasped when he opened it, for standing in front of him was a twenty-one-year-old woman wearing a white blouse,a white skirt, and high-heeled shoes. “I had never seen anyone so beautiful in my life,” he writes. “It was like she was from a dream, or from an entirely different planet.”
Hitomi Soga (Kyodo)
The woman’s Korean was so good that Jenkins initially suspected she was a spy sent to watch him. Their courtship lasted several months, during which they would smoke, talk, and play cards. When she told him she was Japanese, he assumed she was a student of juche who had come to North Korea voluntarily and then not been allowed to leave. One night while playing cards, Jenkinsventured that he had heard of a number of Japanese people who had been brought to the North against their will. The woman looked frightened. She remained silent but pointed to her nose to indicate that she was one of them.
Late on the afternoon of August 12, 1978, the nineteen-year-old Hitomi Soga and her mother, Miyoshi, had gone shopping at the general store near their home on Sado Island.Sado is an isolated isle of rice paddies and verdant, looming mountains twenty-five miles off the coast of Niigata. Hitomi was studying at a nursing college and was looking forward to receiving her degree the following week. It was nearly dusk when mother and daughter bought ice-cream cones to relieve the late-summer heat during their walk home. Suddenly, three men leaped from behind
In 1978 theregime began pairing the defectors with women who had been abducted from a variety of countries. Parrish married a Lebanese woman named Siham Shrieteh, who had been lured to North Korea with three other women with the promise of secretarial jobs that paid a thousand dollars a month. The parents of one of the women had connections to the Lebanese government, which was able to free all four of them.But when Siham arrived home pregnant, her family sent her back to North Korea to live with her husband, Parrish. Abshier married a Thai woman named Anocha Panjoy, who was working as a masseuse in Macau when she was abducted. Dresnok married Doina Bumbea, a Romanian artist who had been lured from Italy with the promise of an art show.
* * *
In the spring of 1980, Jenkins was told the regimewanted him to teach English to a woman, to whom he would be introduced. He’d previously been assigned a series of cooks, with whom he’d been sexually involved, but this was the first time he was formally introduced to someone. At 10:00 p.m. on June 30, there was a knock at Jenkins’s door. He gasped when he opened it, for standing in front of him was a twenty-one-year-old woman wearing a white blouse,a white skirt, and high-heeled shoes. “I had never seen anyone so beautiful in my life,” he writes. “It was like she was from a dream, or from an entirely different planet.”
Hitomi Soga (Kyodo)
The woman’s Korean was so good that Jenkins initially suspected she was a spy sent to watch him. Their courtship lasted several months, during which they would smoke, talk, and play cards. When she told him she was Japanese, he assumed she was a student of juche who had come to North Korea voluntarily and then not been allowed to leave. One night while playing cards, Jenkinsventured that he had heard of a number of Japanese people who had been brought to the North against their will. The woman looked frightened. She remained silent but pointed to her nose to indicate that she was one of them.
Late on the afternoon of August 12, 1978, the nineteen-year-old Hitomi Soga and her mother, Miyoshi, had gone shopping at the general store near their home on Sado Island.Sado is an isolated isle of rice paddies and verdant, looming mountains twenty-five miles off the coast of Niigata. Hitomi was studying at a nursing college and was looking forward to receiving her degree the following week. It was nearly dusk when mother and daughter bought ice-cream cones to relieve the late-summer heat during their walk home. Suddenly, three men leaped from behind
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