defector

The Reluctant Communist was a must read for me since I am premiering my film about North Korea this month. It's worth the read. There's a co-author which saves us from the hard work of reading a bad writer. The details of life in North Korea are extraordinary, all the more so since his life was one of a certain privilege. Anyone living in Pyongyang has a certain degree of privilege. You have to be of good socialist stock to live in the city. But at times his role as a defector is more useful to the government than other times. The movie Crossing the Line tells the same story from the point of view of one of the other U.S. army defectors (four in all). In the movie, you definitely get the idea of the unreliable narrator both from the fact that the defector in that case is still in North Korea so how much can he really say and because the guy comes off as kind of an ass. Jenkins, the protagonist of the book was allowed after years of pressure from Japan to move to Japan with his kidnapped Japanese wife and two daughters. Here is where the problem comes in. To get out of going to U.S. jail as a traitor, he basically has to denounce his entire existence in North Korea (except for his wife and daughters). He goes to a five-star hotel in Indonesia and is amazed at the opulence. Blah blah. Ends the book by thanking God i think. I wonder what he left out to save himself. Nevertheless, he talked a bit about playing American imperialists in films and becoming famous there. That and other great details.