File under stranger than fiction

In 1965, Charles "Robert" Jenkins [pictured right], an American soldier, did something impossible to understand. He deserted to North Korea and got stuck there.

For 39 years, six months and four days, he was trapped in a bizarre Stalinist state — hungry, suffering, told by the government how to live, what to read, and even when to have sex. Never before has an American lived among the secretive North Koreans so long and escaped to tell the tale.

I know that conditions are terrible in North Korea, and we don’t really need an American to go through it to really understand how bad it is, but this segment that 60 Minutes recently re-ran about it seems beyond fiction. The article is here and at the time of this writing you could watch the video on the 60 Minute’s site.