American Defector. Mark D. Treston. Victoria: Trafford Publishing, 2003.

The title of this book, as well as the brief description on the back cover, makes one wonder if it’s about Charles Jenkins or one of the other soldiers that defected to North Korea in the 1960s. But it is not; the author presents the book as the true account of a leftist CIA analyst who defected to North Korea in the mid-1970s, became disillusioned, ended up in a concentration camp, and escaped to China in the mid-1990s.

As the book was given to me in a collection and I started reading in on a long flight, I wasn’t able to lookup the background of the author or book before reading. Aside from questions of veracity, this led to me wondering why I was not aware of this defector and apparently had an enormous hole in my knowledge. I discovered the reason when I returned home and found the book on Amazon; “Genre Fiction.” This was enough to make me want to strangle the author or publisher for not marking the book as such.

The story starts with the author, Treston, presenting himself as a foreign service officer at the U.S. Consulate in Dalian, China, in the early and mid-1990s. He met and eventually befriended “David,” the defector who escaped North Korea. David was a mysterious figure who gave him a bundle of papers with his story of defection and escape, and extracted a promise from Treston to, “let people know about this horrible place,” before disappearing forever.

The rest of the book is David’s story. As I was reading – at this point still not sure if it was supposed to be fact or fiction – I wondered if the author had cleaned up the content any, as it was rather poorly written, even though David was presented as a highly intelligent individual, extremely gifted in language. The detail was amazing considering that David could not have kept a journal with such content or smuggled it out. This only highlighted mistakes like referring to Yongsan Post as “Namsan Post” and “Yangsan.” Another annoying feature was that in almost every occurrence of Kim Il-sung of Kim Jong-il, the “il” was capitalized, giving “Kim IL-sung” and “Kim Jong-IL.”

David was from a well-off family in California, but became a communist. After receiving a masters degree, and teaching himself multiple languages along the way, he got a job as a translator with the CIA, and was eventually stationed in Seoul, where he became enamored with the propaganda he was translating and defected to the “workers paradise” in the North. How did he get across? During a tourist visit to Panmunjom.

After a few weeks, he was assigned to be an English teacher at Kim Il-sung university. He met other foreigners here and had several minor adventures, including much drinking of beer at the one or two clubs for foreigners in Pyongyang. As the years went by, he was tasked with moonlighting at Kim Jong-il’s studios and had several parts in various productions, which led to him having a few intellectual conversations with the Dear Leader himself. At one point he describes a sex party which Kim Jong-il officiating.

I won’t go into the details here, but eventually crosses some well established lines and is sent to a prison camp for several years. Finally he escapes into China and makes his way to Dalian, where he meets information officer Treston at the consulate library, and imparts his epic story.

The overall content of the book incorporates just about every stereotype and generalization about North Korea you can think of, especially those described in traveler’s accounts and by those who have lived or worked in North Korea. The nightlife in Pyongyang is very similar to that described in Michael Harrold’s, Comrades and Strangers (although with graphic yet extremely poorly written sexual detail), while the concentration camp scenes are clearly influenced by Kang Chol-Hwan’s Aquariums of Pyongyang and Lee Soon-oak’s Eyes of the Tailless Animals.

That level of detail makes the book almost believable, especially to one with little knowledge of North Korea. However, several minor mistakes add up, and David attending sex parties with Kim Jong-il and conversing with him alone for several hours crosses over to the unbelievable.

The lack of editing was often distracting. Some paragraphs were fully indented for no apparent reason, and the “IL” mistake was throughout the entire book. The publisher is Trafford, a “print-on-demand” (POD) company, meaning that the editing is the responsibility of the author. I attempted to contact the author to clarify that point, but he did not reply to my emails.

Although it’s an easy read, due to the needless inclusion of graphic sexual content, it’s not a book to give to your parents (or mine at least) or church members to familiarize them with these issue. I am going to firmly disagree with the rating at Amazon, which is 4.5 of 5 stars, and recommend that you read this book if you can borrow it or obtain it at no cost. The overall story is interesting, but highly improbable (for those familiar with the topic), and the many errors and poor editing are a constant annoyance.