US deserter's snap implies Pyongyang abducted citizens from all
over Asia
Nov 7, 2005
The Straits Times
BANGKOK - NORTH Korea abducted a Thai woman in Macau in 1978 and
forced her to marry an American army defector in Pyongyang, a new
book claims.
Intelligence sources fear many other people were seized, drugged
and smuggled into the secretive communist state.
The kidnapped Thai woman was named as Anoche (the Japanese
pronunciation of the Thai name 'Anocha') Panjoy in the book
Kokuhaku (To Tell The Truth), published recently in Japanese and
written by Mr Charles Jenkins, 64, the American soldier who
defected to North Korea in 1965.
In a photograph from Mr Jenkins which was published on the website
of US television network CBS and Thailand's Nation newspaper, the
US Army deserter is seen sitting beside his wife and oldest child
on a beach in North Korea.
But the new and potentially explosive information concerns a woman
on the left of the frame whom Mr Jenkins said was the Thai
national.
If what Mr Jenkins said is true, it would represent the first
photographic evidence that North Korea abducted ordinary citizens
from Asian countries other than Japan and South Korea, according to
CBS.
In his book, Mr Jenkins writes: 'I saw many people from Hong Kong
and South-east Asia who I am sure had been snatched, and many of
the Europeans and Middle Easterners I knew, saw or met in North
Korea were, for one reason or another, unable to leave the country
due to obstacles that the North Koreans purposely constructed to
keep them there.
'It is a tragedy, in my opinion, that more countries don't
investigate further...I am certain there are abductees from all
over the world in North Korea.'
Family and friends from Anocha's village in Thailand's northern
Chiang Mai province believe the woman in the photograph is
Anocha.
'It is conclusive that Anocha Panjoy lived here and people who knew
her insist that she is the same person as in the (Jenkins) photo,'
San Kamphaeng village district chief Surachai Jongrak told the
Nation.
Anocha's brother, Sukham, told the newspaper he had always believed
his sister was alive.
He added that he hoped to go to Bangkok soon to provide the
authorities there with information about her.
'That is why I have never removed her name from our household
registration,' he said.
Officials in the foreign affairs division of Thailand's National
Police Bureau and its National Intelligence Agency said they had no
record of the missing woman.
Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has vowed to follow up with
the North Koreans, and the Thai Embassy in Japan is expected to ask
Tokyo to request more information from Mr Jenkins, who now lives in
Japan with his family.
Mr Jenkins ended up spending four decades in North Korea, unable to
leave. In his book, he writes about the dull uniformity of daily
life in Pyongyang, where he worked as a translator and English
teacher.
Through the intervention of Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro
Koizumi, Mr Jenkins, his Japanese wife Hiromi Soga and their two
daughters were allowed to leave North Korea last November.
The family now lives in Japan. Since his release, Mr Jenkins has
provided a rare first-hand account of the secretive ways of the
hermitic communist regime.
He said one of three US Army deserters, Private Larry Abshier, had
married the Thai woman, who was 19 at the time.
He said the woman had grown up in Thailand and was working as a
prostitute in Macau before her abduction by North Korean
agents.
The other two US Army deserters were Mr Jerry Parrish, who later
married a Lebanese Muslim woman, and Mr James Dresnok, who married
a Romanian woman.
Mr Parrish had three sons, while Mr Dresnok had two sons.
In a report aired by 60 Minutes on CBS recently, Mr Jenkins first
revealed the existence of the Thai woman.
According to him, two North Korean agents had seized her on her way
home from work and taken her to North Korea. -- THE NATION/ASIA
NEWS NETWORK, ASSOCIATED PRESS