Jenkins children 'groomed as spies'

Jenkins is due to start a new life in Japan on Tuesday

Charles Robert Jenkins, the US soldier jailed last month for deserting to North Korea, feared Pyongyang was grooming his daughters to be spies.

Mr Jenkins was giving more details about the 39 years he spent in the North before he surrendered to US military authorities in September.

In an interview with Time magazine, he said he left North Korea for the sake of his children.

Jenkins was released from US army detention two weeks' ago.

He is due to leave an army base near Tokyo on Tuesday for his wife's hometown on Sado island, northern Japan.

I thought, if I go to jail, I go to jail. As long as I get my daughters out Charles Robert Jenkins

He is married to Hitomi Soga, one of five Japanese abducted by North Korea and freed in 2002. The couple has two North Korean-born children, Mika, 21, and Brinda, 19.

Jenkins told Time: "They [the North Korean authorities] wanted us to have children so they could use them later."

He said his two teenagers were being educated in an elite languages college before he managed to leave the North with them.

"I knew what they were trying to do," he said. "They wanted to turn them into spies. My daughters, they could pass as South Korea. There are lots of children of American GIs and South Korean mothers in South Korea. No-one would doubt them for a second," he told Time.

After his wife left for Japan, Jenkins finally arranged, with the help of the Japanese government, to meet her in Indonesia in July.

He said he told Pyongyang that he and his daughters would return.

But nevertheless, his acquaintances in North Korea tried to persuade him not to go.

"They told me, 'If you go, you are going to jai for life,' but I didn't care. I thought, if I go to jail, I go to jail. As long as I get my daughters out," he told Time.

Looking for work

Jenkins was found guilty of desertion last month and was sentenced to 30 days in jail.

He admitted leaving his post in South Korea in 1965 and walking across the border to the North, because he feared his army detail was about to be sent to serve in Vietnam.

He had his term cut by five days for good behaviour, and was released on 27 November.

He is due to leave with his family for Mano, Sado island, on Tuesday. He has expressed interest in getting a job there, although it is not clear what he could do.

Jenkins cannot speak Japanese, and he has admitted he was fired from teaching students English when he was in North Korea, apparently as a result of his thick Carolina drawl.