Reality in North Korea was often the opposite of what was stated publicly. We know this was the case because the North Koreans eventually allowed another serviceman and defector by the name of Charles Jenkins to return to the West. Jenkins told of a very different reality in North Korea. Abshier, Jenkins, and two other American military defectors lived in a tiny one-room house, with no beds, no running water, and electricity that only worked some of the time. Their only source of water for drinking and bathing was a nearby river.
Despite propaganda claiming otherwise, the American soldiers received very little food, often going hungry. All four defectors were forced to spend long hours learning “Juche”, a twisted combination of communist doctrine, North Korean social collectivism, and improvised philosophies. When not memorizing strange ideas, Abshier and the others were forced to spend long hours teaching English to North Koreans who were probably being groomed to be intelligence agents. Failure to memorize propaganda or to teach English well enough was often met with severe beatings.
But Abshier’s fate was perhaps worse than most, as he was described by Jenkins as “the most scared,” and “the simplest” of the Americans. This led to him being taken advantage by one of the other Americans, James Joseph Dresnok, who endlessly harassed and taunted him until the men were later separated.
In the late 1970s, toward the end of the Abshier’s short and ill-fated life, he and the other three American defectors began acting in North Korean films, the first of which was called “Nameless Heroes.” The Americans played evil Western characters who were always defeated by noble North Korean patriots. He and his American cadre gained minor celebrity status in North Korea, which must have been a bright spot in their otherwise difficult lives.
Only a few years later, on July 11, 1983 Abshier suddenly collapsed in his home in North Korea, dead of a heart attack by the age of 40. From military demotion and defection to an improvised and miserable life where he suffered endless abuse in a strange land, Larry Abshier’s unhappy life seems to possess no substantial achievement beyond the provision of a cautionary tale for anyone else tempted to imitate his actions.