Accused US Army deserter pleads guilty

CAMP ZAMA, Japan -- Sergeant Charles Robert Jenkins pleaded guilty today to deserting the US Army in 1965, saying that he wanted to avoid ''hazardous" duty on the Korean peninsula and Vietnam.

The plea was apparently part of a bargain with US military officials to win the frail 64-year-old a lesser sentence. The North Carolina native vanished from his post and lived in North Korea for 39 years.

Jenkins also pleaded guilty to aiding the enemy by teaching English to North Koreans in the 1980s. He denied that he advocated the overthrow of the United States and pleaded not guilty to charges of making disloyal statements.

Jenkins turned himself in to US military authorities on Sept. 11, two months after he left Pyongyang to seek medical treatment in Japan.

Jenkins, in full uniform for the court-martial, had been widely expected to plead guilty to one or more of the charges in return for a lighter sentence. Japan has been urging the US government to be lenient.

The much-anticipated proceedings at Camp Zama, a normally quiet US outpost just south of Tokyo, are the Army's most serious desertion trial since the closing months of World War II, when Private Eddie Slovak became the last American soldier to be executed for the crime.

The stakes are much lower this time.

Since World War II, deserters have rarely felt the full weight of the law. Sentences for convicted deserters are often far less harsh than the maximum -- life in prison -- and almost all end with less-than-honorable discharges.

Analysts say Jenkins, a father of two grown daughters, may well have already sealed a deal with prosecutors that will keep him out of jail.

Guilty or not, Jenkins has quite a tale to tell.

His 39 years on the lam is a record. Though deserters are still wanted from the 1940s, none has ever been caught or surrendered after such a long time on the run.

According to the Army, Jenkins didn't merely run away.

After entering North Korea, he made propaganda broadcasts across the Demilitarized Zone, played a villainous American stooge in at least one anti-US propaganda movie, and taught English at the North's premiere school for spies. For such activities, Jenkins also stands accused of aiding the enemy, soliciting other service members to desert, and encouraging disloyalty.

With Jenkins expected to fight those charges by arguing he had little choice but to follow orders once in North Korea, the court-martial was likely to focus on the desertion allegation itself, and how he got to North Korea to begin with.

Jenkins, who nearly two months ago turned himself in to authorities at Camp Zama, the headquarters of the US Army in Japan, has never admitted guilt. When asked how he ended up in the North in a Japanese magazine interview two years ago, while he was still living in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang, he said simply: ''I walked."

The Army, meanwhile, says it has several notes, one addressed to Jenkins' mother, proving he had no intention of coming back.

There are signs Jenkins has worked out a plea bargain that will involve admitting guilt to at least one charge in exchange for little or no jail time.

Jenkins does not fit the typical profile of a deserter.

Raised in poverty in Rich Square, N.C., he joined the Army as a teenager and had an Army logo tattooed on his arm. In November 1961, after his first tour of duty in South Korea, he was given a Good Conduct Award for ''exemplary behavior, efficiency, and fidelity."

Still, according to the Army, Jenkins, by then a sergeant, told the men in his armored-vehicle platoon one night on or about Jan. 5, 1965, he was going to check out a suspicious noise.

He wasn't heard from again until his voice was broadcast across the DMZ taunting his comrades.

Jenkins has the Japanese public behind him.