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The Reluctant Communist
- My Desertion, Court-Martial, and Forty-Year Imprisonment in North Korea
- Narrated by: John McLain
- Length: 7 hrs
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Publisher's summary
In January of 1965, 24-year-old US Army sergeant Charles Robert Jenkins abandoned his post in South Korea, walked across the DMZ, and surrendered to communist North Korean soldiers standing sentry along the world's most heavily militarized border. He believed his action would get him back to the States and a short jail sentence.
Instead he found himself in another sort of prison, where for 40 years he suffered under one of the most brutal and repressive regimes the world has known. This fast-paced, harrowing tale, told plainly and simply by Jenkins (with journalist Jim Frederick), takes the listener behind the North Korean curtain and reveals the inner workings of its isolated society while offering a powerful testament to the human spirit.
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What listeners love about The Reluctant Communist
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- scott richard mack
- 10-14-21
A story of treason.
As an American I'm ashamed I spent money on this book. It's about a person who turned his back on America and has more excuses than Kim jong Un. I feel like vomiting.
4 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 09-16-21
Excellent history and human story
Excellent historical perspective as well as a great human story. Super easy to stay engaged with this book. Great perspective on North Korea it’s relationship with the US, Japan and the world.
1 person found this helpful
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- Nivedita Maredia Owens
- 06-04-21
A very complex story.
At first, I judged the author harshly for deserting his post, but now I see the human side of him.
1 person found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 06-25-23
Okay
The narrator cannot pronounce Pyongyang! It seems they should have checked that before hiring him!
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- Robert
- 05-11-23
Unique story, worth reading!
Interesting and unique story. Vital in understanding the human element of the tragedy of North Korea.
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- Holly Wofford
- 02-20-23
Insightful and a fantastic read
This is a thoughtful and insightful view into an American’s experience in North Korea. Having read many books written by North Korean defectors I know the author and his family did not physically suffer to the extent most North Korean nationals did in that time. BUT the author was not allowed to leave North Korea for 40 years!!!! And the way he was treated and had constant oversight by the government, etc is fascinating.
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- Rachel
- 02-07-23
excellent story
I struggled with the narrator's voice for quite a while but eventually, the story was so captivating I could ignore it.
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- OB
- 02-03-22
Narrator
The narration is so bad it’s distracting. Even if I speed it up, it becomes more comical but I still couldn’t listen to the story. This must have been an early recording before they realized that the voice matters. Check the sample, that isn’t just a comic stretch of bad reading. That’s the clowns voice.
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- Daniel
- 07-04-23
Really intreasting book
it's crazy how one bad decision can impact your life. this book gives a unique insight into a America's love in NK
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- Damian
- 06-14-20
Annoying narrator
This is a great story but genuinely letdown by the narrator who constantly mispronounces 'Pyongyang'. Then there is the heavy accent which doesn't work effectively.
Redo the narration and this would be an amazing listen.
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- Amazon Customer
- 11-01-19
Brilliant
Been waiting ages for this to come out as an audio book. It was worth the wait.
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- ania
- 12-19-18
A bit boring
I have read many books on North Korea, most of them very involving but this one is not. Not sure how the jurnalist author managed to make such a fascinating subject so boring.
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Story
Barbara Demick's Nothing to Envy follows the lives of six North Koreans over fifteen years - a chaotic period that saw the death of Kim Il-sung and the unchallenged rise to power of his son, Kim Jong-il, and the devastation of a far-ranging famine that killed one-fifth of the population. Taking us into a landscape never before seen, Demick brings to life what it means to be an average Korean citizen, living under the most repressive totalitarian regime today.
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The man who wants to be GOD
- By Gohar on 05-08-10
By: Barbara Demick
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A River in Darkness
- One Man's Escape from North Korea
- By: Masaji Ishikawa, Risa Kobayashi - translator, Martin Brown - translator
- Narrated by: Brian Nishii
- Length: 5 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Half-Korean, half-Japanese, Masaji Ishikawa has spent his whole life feeling like a man without a country. This feeling only deepened when his family moved from Japan to North Korea when Ishikawa was just thirteen years old, and unwittingly became members of the lowest social caste. His father, himself a Korean national, was lured to the new Communist country by promises of abundant work, education for his children, and a higher station in society. But the reality of their new life was far from utopian.
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Awful! And I don't mean the book . . .
- By DJW on 01-03-18
By: Masaji Ishikawa, and others
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Out of North Korea
- A Gripping Novel About an American Held Captive in a North Korean Prison Camp
- By: Alana Terry
- Narrated by: Dave Bandfield
- Length: 5 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Ian McAllister has searched the world over, hunting for that all-elusive perfect photograph. He finds it on a tourist trip to North Korea when he stumbles upon a young street kid foraging for roots. Unaware that this single act will brand him a spy and cost his freedom, Ian takes the shot. Now, he must pay the penalty.
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Alternative Motives
- By Melissa on 09-26-20
By: Alana Terry
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Fatal Charm
- The Shocking True Story of Serial Wife Killer Randy Roth
- By: Carlton Smith
- Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright
- Length: 10 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Randy Roth was handsome, hardworking, kind, and in top physical shape. But for all his charm and good looks, he was seemingly cursed with the ladies. His first marriage ended in divorce before the couple's fifth anniversary; his second wife plunged to her death during a hike; and his third wife left him after less than five months. But when Roth's fourth wife, Cynthia, drowned in an apparent speedboating accident in Washington State's Lake Sammamish just weeks after their first anniversary, a pattern of suspicious behavior finally caught up to him.
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Excellent True Crime! Great Story
- By J. F. Beck on 02-03-19
By: Carlton Smith
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Dear Leader
- Poet, Spy, Escapee - A Look inside North Korea
- By: Jang Jin-sung
- Narrated by: Daniel York
- Length: 11 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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As North Korea's State Poet Laureate, Jang Jin-sung led a charmed life. With food provisions (even as the country suffered through its great famine), a travel pass, access to strictly censored information, and audiences with Kim Jong-il himself, his life in Pyongyang seemed safe and secure. But this privileged existence was about to be shattered. When a strictly forbidden magazine he lent to a friend goes missing, Jang Jin-sung must flee for his life.
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Outstanding! A life-changing listen.
- By Gotta Tellya on 09-29-14
By: Jang Jin-sung
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See You Again in Pyongyang
- By: Travis Jeppesen
- Narrated by: Will Collyer
- Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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From terrifying missile tests, its unmissable Olympic cheering squad, and the war of words between President Trump and Kim Jong Un - not to mention stranger-than-fiction stories of purges and assassinations - news from North Korea has dominated global headlines. But what is life there actually like? In See You Again in Pyongyang, Travis Jeppesen, the first American to complete a university program in North Korea, culls from his experiences living, traveling, and studying in the country to create a multifaceted portrait of the country and its idiosyncratic capital city.
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Save me from the hippie millennials with a PhD
- By Verified purchaser on 06-21-18
By: Travis Jeppesen
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Every Falling Star
- The True Story of How I Survived and Escaped North Korea
- By: Sungju Lee, Susan McClelland
- Narrated by: David Shih
- Length: 9 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Every Falling Star, the first book to portray contemporary North Korea to a young audience, is the intense memoir of a North Korean boy named Sungju who is forced at age 12 to live on the streets and fend for himself. To survive, Sungju creates a gang and lives by thieving, fighting, begging, and stealing rides on cargo trains. Sungju richly recreates his scabrous story, depicting what it was like for a boy alone to create a new family with his gang, his "brothers".
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Riveting, sad, and inspirational
- By Janis Creason on 09-17-16
By: Sungju Lee, and others
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A History of Japan
- Revised Edition
- By: R. H. P. Mason, J. G. Caiger
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 13 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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A classic of Japanese history, this audiobook is the preeminent work on the history of Japan. Newly revised and updated, A History of Japan is a single-volume complete history of the nation of Japan. Starting in ancient Japan during its early pre-history period, A History of Japan covers every important aspect of history and culture through feudal Japan to the post-Cold War period and collapse of the bubble economy in the early 1990s. Recent findings shed additional light on the origins of Japanese civilization and the birth of Japanese culture.
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Content great - pronunciation not so much
- By A. Weber on 03-08-19
By: R. H. P. Mason, and others
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The Girl with Seven Names
- A North Korean Defector’s Story
- By: Hyeonseo Lee, David John
- Narrated by: Josie Dunn
- Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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As a child growing up in North Korea, Hyeonseo Lee was one of millions trapped by a secretive and brutal communist regime. Her home on the border with China gave her some exposure to the world beyond the confines of the Hermit Kingdom and, as the famine of the 1990s struck, she began to wonder, question and realise that she had been brainwashed her entire life. Given the repression, poverty and starvation she witnessed surely her country could not be, as she had been told, 'the best on the planet'?
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Did not like narrator
- By Linda H. Andreae on 10-09-19
By: Hyeonseo Lee, and others
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Prisoner
- My 544 Days in an Iranian Prison—Solitary Confinement, a Sham Trial, High-Stakes Diplomacy, and the Extraordinary Efforts It Took to Get Me Out
- By: Jason Rezaian
- Narrated by: Jason Rezaian
- Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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The dramatic memoir of the journalist who was held hostage in a high-security prison in Tehran for 18 months and whose release - which almost didn’t happen - became a part of the Iran nuclear deal.
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Should have been much better given subject matter
- By Sample Sloth on 04-17-19
By: Jason Rezaian