Deserter film offers glimpse of a life in N.Korea

(Reuters)
Updated: 2007-02-17 09:08

BERLIN - James Joseph Dresnok was a hulking 21-year old U.S. army private stationed in South Korea in 1962 when he bolted across the demilitarized zone, through a minefield, and into enemy territory in the communist North.

More than four decades later, a new film from British director Daniel Gordon tells the unlikely story of Dresnok's life as an American deserter in Kim Jong-Il's reclusive Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Based on extensive interviews with Dresnok and rare footage taken in his adopted hometown of Pyongyang, "Crossing the Line" also provides a glimpse into life in the secretive country President Bush included in his "axis of evil."

Gordon won the trust of the North Korean authorities while making two previous films there and was granted unprecedented freedom to document a little-known chapter of Cold War history.

He said that he did not feel in way restricted in what he could film, but the film does steer clear of making any overt judgements about life in North Korea.

"You would think the government would insist on it being perfect, but they understood that people have to see something resembling the truth," Gordon told Reuters at the Berlin Film Festival, where the film was screened on the "great leader" Kim's 65th birthday.

Dresnok grew up as an orphan in Virginia, abandoned by his parents during a tumultuous childhood he describes in the film as "living hell."

He dropped out of high school, signed up to join the Army on his 17th birthday and was sent off to Germany, but returned two years later to find his young wife had abandoned him.

Desperate, he re-enlisted and was shipped off to South Korea in May 1962, where he soon ran foul of his commanding officer by slinking off patrol duty to visit local prostitutes.

Threatened with a court martial, Dresnok describes how he crossed into North Korean territory one day, walked briskly through a minefield, and into a new life. He was one of four U.S. military men to desert in this way in an 18-month span.

"I was fed up with my childhood, my marriage, my military life," he says in the film. "I was finished. There was only one place to go."

Dresnok and his three fellow defectors lived in relative isolation for years before becoming stars of North Korean cinema by depicting evil Americans in propaganda movies promoted by the young Kim Jong-Il.

Two of the Americans died in North Korea from health-related problems while a third, Charles Robert Jenkins, left the communist state in 2004 and is now living in Japan.

The film touches on the strained relationship between Jenkins and Dresnok. After leaving North Korea, Jenkins accused his fellow American of beating him under orders from the country's authorities -- allegations Dresnok vehemently denies.

Unlike Jenkins, who denounced the North Korean government after his departure, Dresnok says he has no regrets about opting for a life in the stridently anti-American country, where he has three children from two marriages.

The film shows some tough aspects of his life in Pyongyang, such as his tiny apartment, water shortages that force his son to wash himself with a tiny bowl, and electricity outages that come in the middle of filming.

Fluent in Korean, he is shown fishing, joking and sharing drinks with other men in the capital in one scene.

Gordon's other films include "The Game of Their Lives," which tells the story of seven surviving members of North Korea's 1966 World Cup soccer team, and "A State of Mind," a documentary about two gymnasts training for the 2003 Pyongyang mass games.