ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, June 15, 1996 TAG: 9606170080
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON NOTE: BELOW
SOURCE: Associated Press
A DEFENSE DEPARTMENT internal report says eyewitnesses have spotted at least 10 Americans on collective farms in North Korea. Associated Press| Ten to 15 American servicemen apparently taken prisoner during the Korean Warmay still be alive in North Korea and seeking to return home, according to a Defense Department internal report.
The report, stamped ``For Official Use Only,'' also says at least one of the four U.S. soldiers who defected to North Korea in the 1960s may want to come back.
Last January, the Pentagon confirmed that four U.S. deserters were still alive in North Korea, but it dismissed as ``totally false'' a South Korean news report that U.S. officials had confirmed that some U.S. POWs also were alive there.
But in a March 26 internal report assessing recent live sightings of Americans in North Korea, a Pentagon analyst wrote that the Defense Department's POW-MIA Office ``concludes that there are two groups of Americans in North Korea: a small group of defectors and a larger group of 10-15 possible POWs.''
The two-page internal report also said without further explanation: ``According to escorts, many POWs desired to return to U.S.''
The term ``escorts'' may refer to North Koreans who controlled the POWs' movements.
Al Santoli, a special assistant to Rep. Bob Dornan, R-Calif., said Friday that Dornan had questioned James Wold, the director of the Pentagon's POW-MIA Office, on the report this week. He said Wold did not dispute its conclusions. Dornan's office provided a copy of the report to The Associated Press.
Calls to Wold's office on Friday seeking comment were not returned.
In an April 4 letter to a New Mexico woman who had written to Wold questioning the Pentagon's commitment to accounting for POWs from the 1950-53 Korean War, Wold wrote, ``The U.S. government has no evidence that substantiates reports of live POWs from the Korean War being held in North Korea.''
The internal report, which was prepared by In Sung Lee, a Pentagon specialist in Korean War POW issues, based its conclusion on a variety of intelligence reports, including several reports from recent North Korean defectors.
``There are too many live sighting reports, specifically observations of several Caucasians in a collective farm by Romanians and the North Korean defectors' eyewitness of Americans'' to believe no POWs are still there, Lee wrote.
The North Korean government has publicly denied it is holding any U.S. POWs.
The four U.S. Army defectors reportedly still alive in North Korea are Pvt. Larry Allen Abshier of Normal, Ill.; Pfc. James Joseph Dresnok of Glenn Allen, Va.; Cpl. Jerry Wayne Parrish of Henderson, Ky.; and Sgt. Charles Robert Jenkins of Rich Square, N.C., N.C. All deserted from U.S. units in South Korea in the 1960s.
When it confirmed in January that the four were still alive in North Korea, Pentagon officials indicated there had been no communications with the four.
In Lee's March 26 report, however, he wrote that one North Korean defector met Jenkins in a coffee shop in the capital, Pyongyang, and that Jenkins said ``he is now ready to return to America.'' The four Americans were reported to be living in ``foreigners' apartments'' on the west side of Pyongyang.
Lee's report did not mention when the coffee shop encounter occurred.
When he dashed across the Demilitarized Zone into North Korea while on a U.S. Army patrol on Jan. 5, 1965, Jenkins left behind a good-bye note in his barracks.
``Dear Mother: I am sorry for the trouble I will cause you,'' he wrote, according to Army records released to the AP under the Freedom of Information Act. ``I know what I will have to do. I am going to North Korea. Tell family I love them very much.''
The Army later issued court-martial charges against Jenkins after determining that he had participated in North Korean propaganda broadcasts in which he said he enjoyed life in the communist North and urged U.S. soldiers in the South to desert.
The Lee report said that in addition to the four U.S. deserters, ``a second, larger group of Americans is comprised of U.S. service members, most likely POWs, from the Korean War and possibly Vietnam War era.''
The report said ``one of the most compelling'' live sighting reports came from a Romanian who was in North Korea in 1979 working on a construction project when he was driven - apparently by accident - into a collective farm on a bus. He said he saw seven to 10 Caucasians in their 50s, including one with blue eyes, working in the fields. He said he was told they were American prisoners of war.
Last November, U.S. officials interviewed a second person in Romania who was on the bus at the collective farm and who also reported seeing Caucasians there.
``Since the ... sightings, a variety of additional sighting reports have been received, culminating in a recent flurry (last 60 days) of very compelling reports,'' Lee wrote.
LENGTH: Medium: 97 linesby CNB