A while back we got mail from the University of California Press telling us that they have recently published by a book that might be worth reading. It is by now Japan resident Charles Jenkins, and it is titled The Reluctant Communist: My Desertion, Court-Martial, and Forty-Year Imprisonment in North Korea.

Charles Robert Jenkins is a former United States Army soldier who lived in North Korea from 1965 to 2004. He now lives in Japan. Jim Frederick was _Time_ magazine’s Tokyo bureau chief from 2002 to 2006 and is now a Time senior editor stationed in London.

“Jenkins’s straightforward presentation . . . conveys effectively both the hardships that he and other foreigners endured and the understanding and personal ties that he established. Readers have few opportunities to hear firsthand about life inside North Korea; those who follow current events will be intrigued by this story.”- Library Journal

In January of 1965, twenty-four-year-old U.S. Army sergeant Charles Robert Jenkins abandoned his post in South Korea, walked across the DMZ, and surrendered to communist North Korean soldiers standing sentry along the world’s most heavily militarized border. He believed his action would get him back to the States and a short jail sentence. Instead he found himself in another sort of prison, where for forty years he suffered under one of the most brutal and repressive regimes the world has known. This fast-paced, harrowing tale, told plainly and simply by Jenkins (with journalist Jim Frederick), takes the reader behind the North Korean curtain and reveals the inner workings of its isolated society while offering a powerful testament to the human spirit.

Full information about the book, including the table of contents, is available online.