Deserter Jenkins may visit U.S.
TOKYO, Japan (CNN) -- High-profile U.S. Army deserter Charles Jenkins may return to the United States for the first time in 40 years to visit his elderly mother, according to Japanese media reports.
The 65-year-old Jenkins deserted to North Korea while serving as a sergeant in South Korea patrolling the demilitarized zone between the two nations.
He now lives in Japan with his Japanese wife and daughters after giving himself up to U.S. authorities last year.
Jenkins has asked to travel to the United States to see his 91-year-old mother who lives in a nursing home in North Carolina, Japan's Yomiuri newspaper reported on Wednesday.
The newspaper said Jenkins would be accompanied by his family and that the trip was expected to last around a week.
The Kyodo news agency says Jenkins may head to the United States as soon as Tuesday next week.
Jenkins's case made headlines last year when he gave himself up to U.S. authorities after traveling to Japan to receive medical treatment.
Last November he was sentenced to spend a month in a military prison and received a dishonorable discharge, ending the longest-running U.S. desertion case on record.
Jenkins has said he deserted to North Korea because he feared he would be reassigned to fight in Vietnam.
North Korea used Jenkins as a propaganda tool, making him appear in newsreels denouncing the United States.
He later married a Japanese woman, Hitomi Soga, who had been kidnapped by North Korea in 1978 to help train spies and teach them Japanese.
She was allowed to return to Japan with four other abductees in 2002 after North Korea admitted the kidnappings.
Jenkins and Soga now live on an isolated Japanese island with their two daughters.
