During the Cold War, an American soldier named James Joseph Dresnok was stationed on the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea. One day …

33 Responses

  1. He wasn’t moored to anything. He had no identity and failed at the one he imagined creating. The North Koreans provided him essentially with an identity and the family he longed for. Was it ideal? No, but few families are idyllic but still much better than the upbringing he had.

  2. I say go where you can be happy. Apparently America didn't work for him, sounds like he had a horrific upbringing and life, and he then managed to achieve a good life and famly in North Korea. Good for him. One man's hell is another man's paradise. Ive never bought into Patriotism based on the accident of birth and the only loyalty I have is to myself, my loved ones and my happiness, not a country or political system. Had I been in his got-nothing-to-lose hopeless situation, i would have probably took that same walk across the DMZ. When you have nothing to lose, you can only gain or die. I'm glad for him that his choice was a gain.

  3. A man who hated taking orders and merely wanted a normal life with a wife, children, and home joins the Army (where ALL of one's waking life, at least for an enlisted man, IS taking orders), then runs into trouble, and subsequently defects to a giant communist anthill (DPRK) where one's every thought is regulated, and every sign of individuality is ruthlessly stamped out. Even US Army life is an experience in personal anarchism by comparison! Stranger things have happened, but this J.J. Dresnok led one weird life!
    A world where America was the land of oppression and "taking orders", and communist North Korea was a land of freedom and prosperity…Truth can be far stranger than fiction?

  4. Rotten story about 4 wretched deserters, told by a guy with a hatred of America, and who still cannot find a wig to cover up his chrome dome. ugh !

    Dresnok was scum. Sure, his patents were dirtbags, but lots of kids have been in orphanages / foster homes. That is not a goodreason to be a village idiot. If he wanted "to see the World" , then he should hace joined the Navy.

    If he did not like being ordered … then he should have never have enlisted in the military. Dresnok was scum from the get go. He should have got a job as a bellboy or pumping gas. There were lots of jobs in the early 1960's.

    The annoying video nerd does not understand that "Drill Sergeants" do yell in Basic Training— because they are trying to get inside the bucket of civilian dung ( civilian cranium ) and undo the garbage that a 17 to 25 year-old boy is full of after attending state-run schools.

    After Basic training there are no more "Drill Sergeants". After you have graduated Basic training you are assigned a post, and given your duty. Dresnok was a boozer / loser.

    Dresnok was the problem. So were the three traitorous scum with him. To bad he and they lived so long.

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