THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 21, 1996 TAG: 9601210049
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BILL SIZEMORE, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICH SQUARE, N.C. LENGTH: Long : 140 lines
When he saw the grainy photo on the TV news, Wayne Pope took one look at the slight, balding figure in dark glasses and picked up the phone.
``I called a friend of mine that knew him and said, `Look at Channel 24, and if you see anything, call me back,' '' said Pope. ``About 20 minutes later he called back and said, `Wayne, I just saw Super.' ''
``Super'' was the ironic nickname of Robert Jenkins, who grew up a short, scrawny kid in this hamlet of 1,000 people, 80 miles southwest of Norfolk. Rich Square sits astride Route 258 in the heart of North Carolina's cotton and peanut belt.
Jenkins brought unaccustomed notoriety to Rich Square last week when the photo, from a 1980s North Korean propaganda film, was published by a South Korean newspaper.
Pope, 51, who works at his father's Ford dealership in the middle of town, had thought his old buddy was long dead.
But the Pentagon says he is a living relic of a bygone era.
Jenkins is believed to be one of four U.S. soldiers who deserted their units at the height of the Cold War in the 1960s and are still alive in North Korea, one of the world's last communist strongholds.
U.S. officials said it appears the man in the photo is, indeed, Jenkins.
To Pope, there's no doubt. ``As soon as I saw it, I knew who it was,'' he said.
According to declassified information acquired by the National Alliance of Families for the Return of America's Missing Servicemen, a Seattle-based activist group for prisoners of war and soldiers missing in action, Army Sgt. Robert Jenkins left his unit and crossed over into North Korea's secretive, closed society in January 1965. He was 25.
To some, it might have seemed an incongruous move for Jenkins, a high school dropout who had worked as a car washer at the Ford dealership and at the service station down the street.
But Pope wasn't surprised.
``He told me the last time he came home, which was probably late '64 or early '65, that when he left this time he wasn't coming back,'' Pope said. ``I'll never forget it. I thought he was full of something - that's what I told him.
``But he did it!''
The consensus, in both Rich Square and Washington, is that Jenkins switched sides for personal, not political, reasons. People who knew him say that he had never shown any political inclinations.
``He wouldn't have done it on his own,'' Pope said. ``Somebody had to entice him into it.''
C.G. Hall, who employed Jenkins at his service station, described him as a good, reliable worker.
``He got in the National Guard,'' Hall said. ``He was Soldier of the Year one year. He loved the service. He loved the Army. That's why I've never understood why he did what he did.''
Earl Daniels was a classmate of Jenkins in the small Rich Square school. Because Jenkins was about three years older than the other children, ``we sort of looked up to him,'' Daniels said.
``He would wear his National Guard uniform to school sometimes. That would impress us. He seemed to be very proud of being in the National Guard.''
When reports of Jenkins' defection surfaced, ``I don't think anybody initially believed it,'' Daniels said. ``I think most people thought he must have been captured.''
Jenkins' father operated the local coal and ice plant. Robert, one of five children, was a teenager when his father died.
Willie Conner, Rich Square's retired police chief, remembers the family well. ``I was very familiar with his mother and father both. They were both good, honest, hard-working people,'' Conner said.
``I never had any problems with Robert. He was always sort of a leader. He was really grown beyond his years. After his father died, he sort of took over the responsibility of looking after his mother and his brother and sisters.
``He dropped out of high school and went to work to make some money to help take care of those other children.''
He was resourceful, too. Wayne Pope remembers a time when Jenkins and his brother won a Shetland pony at a livestock show in a neighboring town. They took the back seat out of their sedan, crammed in the pony and drove him back to Rich Square, where they traded him in as a down payment on a red '58 Ford.
Conner said he, like most people in Rich Square, was stunned by the reports of Jenkins' defection.
But then he added: ``You can't ever tell. Under pressure, a human being will do a lot of strange things. You can train an animal to do certain things because they've got a one-track mind. You can train them to jump through a hoop of fire. But an individual is a different thing altogether. If you put them under enough pressure, they will change their mind.''
Jenkins' relatives have been pondering the mystery for 31 years. For them, the new reports have reopened old wounds.
``It is a lie,'' said Faye Hyman, Jenkins' sister, who lives in the nearby town of Scotland Neck. ``He is not a defector.''
His mother, Pattie Casper, 75, who lives in Roanoke Rapids, said she's always believed that her son didn't defect, but was killed. ``Because he loved the Army,'' she said. ``And he loved his country.''
On the night he vanished, Jenkins was leading a four-man patrol just south of the Korean demilitarized zone, about six miles east of the truce village of Panmunjom, according to a once-classified Army report.
Jenkins told his squad to wait for him, then disappeared about 2:30 a.m., the report says.
Three weeks later, a North Korean radio broadcast reported Jenkins' defection, according to an Army press release issued at the time.
A North Korean propaganda brochure published sometime after that, acquired by journalist Mark Sauter, contains photos of Jenkins and the other three Americans fishing, boating, picnicking and playing ping pong with Koreans.
About 8,200 American soldiers are listed as missing in action from the 1950-53 Korean War, which also claimed more than 33,000 U.S. lives.
The Seattle POW-MIA group believes some POWs - either from the Korean War, or prisoners shipped to North Korea during the Vietnam War - are still alive. The Pentagon disputes that assertion.
The group wants U.S. officials, who are talking to North Korea about recovering remains of American soldiers, to push to see any defectors still living.
The men should have the chance to return to America if they want, the group says, and they should be interviewed about any POWs they've seen.
The Army report says Jenkins left a short note behind that began, ``Dear Mother, I am sorry for the trouble I will cause you.''
But Casper, his mother, said the note didn't appear to be his handwriting - more evidence to her that he didn't really defect. She said she last saw her son in Rich Square a month before he disappeared.
``He came home,'' she said, ``and left happy.''
ILLUSTRATION: Photos
Maps
Photo
Wayne Pope
BILL SIZEMORE photos/The Virginian-Pilot
Robert Jenkins grew up in this house in Rich Square, N.C. He
vanished 31 years ago, near the DMZ in Korea. U.S. officials believe
personal, not political reasons, led him to defect.
KEYWORDS: KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWS SERVICE CONTRIBUTED TO THIS REPORT.
by CNB