Do You Recall GI Jenkins, Who Defected to North Korea?

choi

Graeme Wood, The Defector; From US Army sergeant to nationalized North Korean citizen to vendor of Japanese crackers. The Atlantic, September 2013.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magaz ... he-defector/309436/

Note:
(a)
(i) Graham
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham
(Graham or Graeme)

Both are pronounced the same and have the same etymology (see next).
(ii) Dictionary of American Family Names (published by Oxford University Press) says the Scottish and English surname Graham is from the name of a place: "Grantham in Lincolnshire, recorded in Domesday Book as Graham (as well as Grantham, Grandham, and Granham)"--"of uncertain origin" but "the final element is Old English ham ‘homestead.’"

(b) Charles Robert Jenkins "had two daughters by Hitomi Soga, a Japanese woman whom North Korean agents kidnapped in 1978, apparently to enslave her as a teacher of Japanese language and customs for North Korean spies. Soga, who is 19 years Jenkins’s junior, was freed in 2002 when Kim Jong Il attempted détente with Japan. Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi personally ensured that Jenkins and their daughters, Mika and Brinda, now 30 and 28, could join her."
(i) Hitomi SOGA  曽我 ひとみ
hitomi 瞳 【ひとみ】 (n): "pupil (of eye)"
(ii) “daughters 娘 Mika and Brinda”
長女の 美香 さん、次女の ブリンダ さん  (The Japanese and Chinese pronunciations of 香 is “ka” and “kō,” respectively.)
(ii) Soga was the surname of a powerful Japanese clan, but of different kanji.

Soga clan  蘇我 氏
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soga_clan

(c) "After Jenkins finally left North Korea in 2004, at age 64, the US Army threw him in the stockade for 24 days and discharged him dishonorably. But since then he has lived a quiet life on Sado, his wife’s home island, a speck in the Sea of Japan that has served historically as a Japanese Elba, a secluded site for the exile of political undesirables."
(i) stockade
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockade
(section 2 Stockade as a military prison)
* That's military prison for army.
* Compare
military prison
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_prison
(section 1.6.1 Brig: "A brig is a United States military prison aboard a United States Navy or Coast Guard vessel, or at an American naval or Marine Corps base. The term derives from the Navy's historical use of twin-mast sailing ships—or brigs—as prison ships")
(ii) Sado, Niigata 新潟県 佐渡 市
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sado,_Niigata
(section 3.2 Exile in Sado)

The name came from 佐渡国, whose etymology is unclear but first recorded in 700 AD as 佐度国.

(d) "When I met Jenkins, his top priority was to sell me senbei, light-brown honey-flavored crackers. He is employed by a historical museum, where he wears a yellow kimono-like jacket called a happi and hawks cracker boxes to tourists in the gift shop. * * * I found his diminutive, jug-eared appearance endearing"
(i) senbei  煎餅
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senbei
(rice cracker)

is alternatively Romanticized as sembei, BECAUSE in English, it is always "m"--not "n"--that goes before "b" or "p."
(ii) happi  法被 or 半被
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happi
* It is worn by adults (men and women) and children alike--in festivals 祭.
* 法被
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%B3%95%E8%A2%AB
(半被; 名称由来: 「はっぴ」という語は、古代、束帯を着る際に袍（ほう）の下に着用した袖のない胴衣「半臂」（はんぴ）に由来するとされる。「法被」の字は、高僧が座る椅子の背もたれに掛ける布のことを「法被」（はっぴ）というが、衣服の法被と全く関連がないことから、単なる宛て字と見られている)

translation: It came from 半臂, sleeveless clothing, worn under official robe 束帯, for torso in ancient times. 法被 is the cloth hanged over the back of the chair a priest sits on, which has nothing to do with the clothing (we are talking about); thus it [法被 as clothing] is deemed as mere attempt to use kanji to denote pronunciation.

* 束帯
ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/束帯  
* ateji 当て字; 宛て字 【あてじ】 (n): "kanji used as a phonetic symbol, instead of for the meaning; phonetic-equivalent character"
(iii) jug-eared (adj; First Known Use 1947):
"having protuberant ears"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/jug-eared

I can not find its etymology, but once one goes to images.google.com, he will know what it means.

(e) “'Photo' is one of the few words he [Jenkins] knows in Japanese—he speaks Korean at home."

shashin 写真 【しゃしん】 (n)

(f) "North Korea is never far from his mind: if you mention juche—the infamous pillar of North Korean ideology—in his presence, his eyes instantly glaze over as he lapses into a robotic Korean recitation of its principles, memorized syllable by compulsory syllable in the 1960s and ’70s."

juche  主體
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juche

(g) "weevil-infested rice rations"

rice weevil
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_weevil
(2mm long)

(h) Chongsan-ri  鍾山 里

All Chinese characters--except kanji, that is--in this posting are hanja (漢字 in Korean pronunciation).