From North Carolina to North Korea and beyond: meeting a U.S. defector in Japan | NK News
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September 29, 2026Sep 29, 2026

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From North Carolina to North Korea and beyond: meeting a U.S. defector in Japan

Charles Robert Jenkins spent 39 years in the DPRK, working as everything from translator to silver screen star

50 kilometers off the coast of Niigata Prefecture, Japan lies the distant and picturesque Sado Island.

A remote location even for those on the Japanese mainland, gold mines, fresh seafood, temples, festivals, and delicious sake make it a popular tourist destination and one that I myself made the long voyage to in August 2017.

For hundreds of years, Japanese rulers utilized the location as a place of banishment for political adversaries due to its isolated position far away from civilization.

Well off the beaten path, if one visited the Sado History Museum at a certain point, they might have been