Jottings from the Granite Studio

Couple of interesting articles in the Korea field via the History News Network. The first is on the last American defector still living in North Korea.

James [note: He is referred to as "Joe" in the 60 Minutes piece] Dresnok…broke 44 years of silence since he slipped across South Korea’s heavily mined border to begin a new life that included appearances in anti-American propaganda films.

“I don’t have intentions of leaving,” he said, even “if you put a billion damn dollars of gold on the table.” Dresnok was speaking in an interview with British filmmakers broadcast by the CBS television network’s 60 Minutes program on Sunday.

“I really feel at home. I wouldn’t trade it for nothing.” (Partial video of the interview with Dresnok broadcast 1/28/07)

Dresnok, who at 65 lives in a small apartment in Pyongyang, has two children, one age six, and the other, whose mother was from Eastern Europe, is a blond-haired university student who claims that, despite his looks, he is Korean. Dresnok is the subject of a film called Crossing the Line by Dan Gordon and Nick Bonner, who were also behind the 2002 film The Game of their Lives about the improbable run made by the North Korean soccer team in the 1966 World Cup.

Out of Massachusetts, a controversial book about the aftermath of World War II will remain in 6th grade classrooms in the Dover-Sherborn Regional School district.

So Far from the Bamboo Grove by Massachusetts author Yoko Kawashima Watkins was challenged by a group of 13 parents who said it was racist against Koreans and too graphic for sixth-graders. The award-winning book is Watkins’s story, told through her eyes when she was 11 , of escaping Korea after World War II with her family and the horrors they experienced and witnessed on their way to Japan. Some parents argued that it wrongly ignores the atrocities committed by the Japanese while they occupied Korea.

The school committee voted instead to “revamp the English lesson to better reflect the story’s historical context.”