Latest / Chris Thrall's Bought the T-Shirt Podcast / Inside The Korean Special Forces | Minjoon Kim

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Inside The Korean Special Forces | Minjoon Kim · Chris Thrall's Bought the T-Shirt Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Every neighbor God definitely flavor.
• 0:03
  Speaker 2: Did somebody say chastise them? Kids?
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Nine?
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: Three little words? It's dinner time.
• 0:09
  Speaker 3: Head sits down for some eyebrows, it's the ol G.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: We are that smell? Have you seen drags?
• 0:15
  Speaker 3: Thank you's meeting new sun, tasty nob and nine from
• 0:19
  Speaker 3: the menu.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Ravi, whoever you are, whatever your flavors, every neighbor deaf favor,
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: somebody's say chasty.
• 0:31
  Speaker 3: Hello friends, I'm your host, Chris Strou I'm a former
• 0:35
  Speaker 3: Romeries commando. I've adventured for better and sometimes worse, across
• 0:41
  Speaker 3: eighty countries on all seven continents. Welcome to the Port
• 0:46
  Speaker 3: the t Shirt Podcast.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Hiron, How are you? Brother?
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: Excellent? Chris? Pretty good yourself?
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: Yes, I love it when somebody dresses up smart for
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: my show. Thank you. I'm letting the team down here.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: But yes, I think in the Far East, politeness is
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: taken very seriously, isn't it.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: Oh yes, absolutely, We're all about the bowing and you know,
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: gift giving that kind of stuff.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But respect is everything.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, Your respect is your name. Yeah.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: I think the I think the reason some of the
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: the reason the military functions well is a lot of
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: it's based on respect for your buddies, isn't it.
• 1:37
  Speaker 4: Oh?
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Absolutely yeah, But it's not always like that, unfortunately, No, no, sir,
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: not always so. Ah, piren I've after I went to
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: the trouble of changing your your overlay there for some reason,
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: I've still got the other one on. Just bear with
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: me one second.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: That's perfectly fine.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Ah, I somehow lost the other one. I'm sorry.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: It is that.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: Okay, it's Minjun, it says min June at the moment.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's perfectly fine. Yeah, I don't mind at all.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, friends at home, Sorry, Minjune has his anglicized name,
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: which is Pyrone. That's why you're probably getting a bit confused.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: That's me messing up the technology. Pyrone. You are a
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: US attorney, correct. I'm just immediately picture you on some
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: you know, high high brow TV show how they go?
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: How do you get from you know, elite forces over
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: there in South Korea to become a US attorney?
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: Well, to say the least, the journey was quite arduous.
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure I messaged my but my former battalion
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: commander about it a few years ago, and I'm pretty
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: sure to date i'm the only US attorney to have
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: gone through a special Operations treaty as well. But uh yeah,
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: but uh I I think that I genuinely wanted to
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: change myself for the better. Uh Okay, the so ever,
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: since I was a kid, I wanted to be a
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: special operations guy.
• 3:15
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: I was the type of guy who ever since I
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: was fiber six, Right, I saw I saw these documentaries
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: on TV. Right, you know what I'm talking about, right,
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: with the old school guys running around with boats on
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: their heads, like crawling through dirt and mud. Right, and
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: I was like, that's what I want to do. Right Ever,
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: since I was a kid. Uh And then for my
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: for my all of my teens and my early twenties,
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: that's all I talked about, Like my, my, my, my
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: book shelf at home is just full of like special
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: operations books like every like Rhodesia, South Africa, you know,
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: East Germany, like all those all those small little conflicts.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: So that's all I wanted to do since I was
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: a kid. And then I went there. I literally experienced
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: everything that I wanted to, right. I became a special
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: operations marine. I I went to Thailand, I trained with
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: US Marines. We jumped out of you know, helicopters together,
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: all that buddy buddy stuff you see in the movies.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: And then I was I was discharged. What do you
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: call it in the UK when you're when you finish
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: your military service, when you it's like you're just you finished.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: You Oh, that is a good question. If we say
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: we're discharge, it's generally for medical reasons or bad conduct.
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: Oh okay.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: If we say we just say, someone can correct me
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: on this in the comments below. But we just say
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: we we left, Oh okay, I say after okay, oh yeah,
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: or like we transitioned into civilian.
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: Street, city street, right right, right?
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, sorry, you were saying no, no, no, no,
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: So after so.
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  Speaker 2: After I got out, I left the military when I
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: was twenty three years old, and I went back to university.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: But I was completely directionless, pointless and clueless, like completely.
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: I went a class and then I drank and I partied.
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: Those were literally the only things that I did. I drank,
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: I drank a lot. I studied, but I was I shouldn't.
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: I don't know if I should say this, but I
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: was a humanities major, so the study wasn't as difficult
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: as you know, as you would expect from an engineering
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: or medical program. And right before I was about to graduate,
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: Corona like COVID nineteen broke out, and I decided that
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: the best course of action for me to take would
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: be going to would we'd be going to an American
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: law school, would be going to US law school in Korea.
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: So here I am. I passed two bar exams and
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: I'm practicing currently as an attorney.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: We had an expression here during the COVID we say,
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: the best way to deal with it is just turn
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: the television off, and then miraculously it completely went away.
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: Miraculously. Yes, there, indeed, So.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: Let's track back here, because wow, you said you certainly
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: packed a lot into your How old are you, pyne
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: if I may ask.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: I'm currently twenty nine years old. Yeah.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: This is the thing, isn't it. When you have a
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: military service, you get a lot of this experience that well,
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: you just don't get in civilian street. I'm not trying
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: to sell the military here, not at all. But you
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: know immediately you've done an awful lot for a relatively
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: young man. It's incredible. Now you're an attorney. That's just mine.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: Absolutely mind burnt and by the sounds of it you've
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: had the you know, the ups and downs in between.
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, would you say, you.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: Know, I kind of talk about this a lot. I'm
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: trying to get people to understand PTSD, and I say
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: that a lot of our military, a significant percentage, had
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: very challenging childhoods. We kind of joined up to maybe
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: prove to like an absent father or a dad that
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: didn't love us enough, basically that hey, you know, we
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: can be good in life. And this kind of catches
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: up with a lot of British serviceman when they leave,
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: all this kind of childhood baggage comes back and it
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: hasn't been healed and dealt with. Then they start drinking
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: or whatever it might be, and the next thing you know,
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: you might be homeless or mentally unwell, or abusing your
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: family or whatever. And we got a very high suicide
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: rate as well. Unfortunately, can you relate to any of that?
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: I would honestly say that, well, okay, for speaking of
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: me personally, I did not come from a tough like
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: broken home or anything. I grew up quite privileged. I was.
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: You know, if you watch Hollywood movies like there's like
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: the Fat Asian Kid, I'm a fattish, spoiled Asian kid.
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: That was basically me growing up right. So I had
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: every privilege. I was extremely blessed. But the funny thing
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: is is that I was never grateful for it until
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: I went to boot camp. I I'll be honest, Like
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: for guys like me who grew up, you know, upper
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: middle class, the military is the first time you realize
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: that you should shut up and be grateful for what
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: you have every day. I still vividly remember one there
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  Speaker 2: was one dude I went to the religious services with
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  Speaker 2: every Sunday, we go to religious services together. He was
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: the third quickest runner in our entire training platoon, like
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  Speaker 2: five hundred guys. He was the third fastest runner out
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: of five hundred guys. And I remember and then at
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  Speaker 2: religious services, I think on the final week, they have
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: you write your your address down. They had write your
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: address down and I was writing my address down and
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: we were kind of close, uh, and I was I
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: asked him, why why didn't you write down your your
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: home address? And he was like, don't have one of those? Yeah,
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: and uh. And then I was like, you know, just
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: like your your your your mom's are your answers And
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: he was like, he just didn't answer me. So that
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: was I think that was the first moment that I
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: really realized like how privileged and lucky I was, and
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: I spent my entire teens and twenties being ungrateful for that. Okay,
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: so myself personally, no, but many guys that I know,
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: American and Korean, yes, absolutely, do you think though?
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: Piring because I get this a lot. I get people say, oh, no,
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: I had a great childhood christ And then when we
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: kind of look at it, and I mean, I'm not
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: suggesting this is the case with you, but for the
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: sake of our conversation, I say to them, what was
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: the relationship with your dad? Like, and they're like, oh,
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: he was great. I'm like, no, no, no, what was
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: your relationship And they're like, oh, yeah, well he kind
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: of like wasn't around a lot, but you know, he
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: was a good guy.
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: He was a.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: Professional soldier and everyone respected. And I'm like, I'm not
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: talking about that, I'm saying, what was his relationship with you?
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: And then the kind of wheels start to fall off
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: the wagon. So did you and your dad get on?
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: You know?
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: You do you think you had that great relationship that
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: everyone sort of dreams of.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: Oh absolutely yes, But again, growing up in South Korean
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: the two thousands was for not just for myself but
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: for every mail In the early two thousands, it was
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: quite harsh. For Let me just give you one example.
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: When I went to public school. This is just public
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: school in Korea. We went on a school field trip
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: and my friends and I we were like, how old
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: were we? We were twelve years old, twelve years old,
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: twelve years old, and we snuck out of our rooms
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: during our field trip. Was an overnight field trip, so
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: we snuck got out of our rooms to buy some
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: cookies and snacks from the local convenience store and our
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: tea shirt. A male teacher caught us and he just
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: began he put us, you know, in the push up position.
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: He put us in the push up position, and then
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: first he began to kick us, and then he began
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: to hit us with broomsticks. Right, But this is I
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: don't know what it's like in the UK, but this
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: was very normal for men of my generation born in
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: the nineteen nineties in Korea. So it was kind of
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: a harsh, rigid atmosphere where you're not really allowed to
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: show much emotion. Just is the Korea back then itself,
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: including now as well, but especially back then, it was
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: just it really think of the UK in the fifties
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: or sixties, that's how it was, like you wore a
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: souit to work, right, yeah, you had you had a
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: guinness once a week with the lads, and you didn't
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: talk about much. So that that's just kind of the
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: that was kind of the environment, and it was hard
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: to I guess, relate with my father and with my
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: family on a personal level really until I became an
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: adult and I joined the military, really because I think
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: that and we had a we always we always, even
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: in university, I would call him like once a week
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: always to let him know I'm okay. So we had
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: an awesome relationship when we still do in fact, but
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: I think that the menatory military service genuinely made me
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: closer to him, like genuinely.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because yeah, sorry, I'm just i should explain parate.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: If I'm looking over there, I'm just showing your photos
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: on my other screen for people. People, they're amazing, you
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: look so young in a couple of them.
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: It's really here.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: But yeah, so yeah, that's the kind of unpicking that
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm the same. I grew up in the seventies. Honestly,
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: I had experience of complete strangers coming across the street
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: hitting me around the head, you know, as hard as
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: they could, like you're almost like knocked unconscious sort of thing.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: And I remember my mother one time was like, well,
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: what's the matter with you? I was like holding my ear,
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: you know, We've been at a fairground and this adult
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: would just come up smack me. And I said, oh,
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: that that man over there just hit me.
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: Mum.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: She was like what I said, Yeah, he just just
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: hit She said, why didn't you tell me? Well, I
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: didn't tell a pirm because I just thought that was
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: like normal, you know. That was that was my childhood,
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: was adults being abusive, and I always thought, well, the
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: problem must be me, obviously, So it is. It is interesting,
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: and I get it that some people in the seventies
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: probably had wonderful childhoods, and I'm very happy for them,
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: But for a lot of us, it was you know,
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: I remember them Caning, you know you know what Caine is, right, Caning.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: They would cane the kids in school, and let's be honest,
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: they were the poor kids from the rough Council of
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: State that they they didn't have a good start in life,
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: and the behavior is just representing the pain that they're
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: going through at home.
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: None of the system.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and the system didn't recognize that at all. The
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: teachers had no clue about psychology, sociology, human biology, none
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: of this stuff, and they would get these poor kids
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: out and they would hit them so hard in front
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: of the whole class. Myself, I got stripped off once
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: in front of my whole class. I tell you, it
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: was the most frightening and humiliating thing I ever. I
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: was so embarrassed. I hid under the we were cleaning
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: the dirt off the floor that we used to pick
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: up the litter on the floor at the end of
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: the day, and I was just under the table, pretending
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: to pick up litter, just wishing like I could stay
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: there forever and I'd never have to come out and
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: see anyone. It was and yeah, that was just that
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: was normal. And a lot of people would say, oh,
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: school was wonderful back now, I'm just saying, no, I don't.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: I don't think it always was, you know, No, it
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: was that. So back to your story, of course, what
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: can you just tell us for our friends at home?
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: What literary organization you joined?
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: Uh so the Korean MILI. So okay, I'll pretend that
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: whoever is watching this has like zero background whatsoever, Okay,
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: is that? Okay?
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: Absolutely?
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: Okay. So when you tour, when you turn eighteen, I
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: believe in Korea, you have to go get your medical checkup.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: Medical so it's like factory factoring the Vietnam War or
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: the Malayan insurgency for US when they still had a
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: national service. Right when they still had national service. Almost
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: everybody passes the medical checkup exam, including kids who shouldn't.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: So you have kids of like genuine mental problems and
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: they shouldn't be going into whatever unit they're going into.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: But you turn eighteen, you get your draft card, right,
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: you go and get the medical checkup, your eye exam,
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: and then they give they classify you as what grade
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: one two or three? Grade one two or three one
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: two or three means you're you're you're qualified for active duty,
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: and I think four four and five you have to
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: do an alternative service, so you have to work at
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: city hall as a clerk for two years something like that.
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: But anyways, I got my grade two and ninety percent
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: of Korean men go to university. So ninety percent of
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: the guys, including myself, deferred their enlistment. They went to
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: university first. And when I don't think now, but back
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: when I was in my early twenties, you couldn't even go.
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: You couldn't if you were a Korean man. You could
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: not go abroad without having done your military service. Like
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: you could, but you have to constantly renew your passport.
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: You couldn't renew your passport the expiration date, the validity
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: date for about ten years, right my passport now it's
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: like ten years right back, but if you haven't done
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: your military service, it's like one year. So every year
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: you have to get a renewed. They make it difficult
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: for you on purpose.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: So you can't escape the country basically escape the service.
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah you can, but then you can't back home, and
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: if you do come home, you could be arrested. There's
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: a whole bunch of legal immigration issues that arise for you.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: That's like that we could go into four hours. Yeah, yeah,
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: so I was. And then I was twenty twenty one
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: and I decided to volunteer for the Marines, and I
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: had finished I had finished exactly two years of university
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: by then. So I finished two years of university and
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: I decided to volunteer for the Marines. Now I ya
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: and I decided to volunteer for the reconnaissance Reconnaissance Marines
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: because they were, you know, the baddest dudes. Korean Marine.
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: I think the Royal Marine commandos. They could wear berets,
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: the green green berets, right, the Royal Marines, right, but
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: in Korean, in Korea, we wear the caps that the
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: US Marines use. Yeah, you've seen them, right, But if
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: in Korea, if you become a recon marine, you can
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: wear a you can do all this cool stuff. And
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: I saw this, you know, I saw I was all
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: like every twenty one year old kid. I saw the
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: recruiting posters and I was like, that's what I want
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: to do. It's like my dream come true. Right. So
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: I walked into the recruiter's office and I was like, Sir,
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: I want to be a recon marine. And he looked
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: at me straight in the face and he said, you
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: do not. Boy. He's like, I would recon myself. You
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: do not want recon right? Right? Yeah? But he yeah,
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: but I volunteered. I passed the PT test, the initial
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: PT test is a joke, right, You just do like
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: a few push ups and sit ups. But then in
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: boot camp there's another They take all the recon recon
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: wannabes and then they make them run like a three
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: kilometer course push up swimming, right, and then you're selected.
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: Then you have to go to your unit and then
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: you have to go through reconnaissance school. I call it
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: dive school because that's basically what it is. What it's
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: called reconnaissance school, Like the official term is reconnaissance school.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: So you have to go through reconnaissance school airborne school,
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: and then you're considered like a fully qualified recon marine.
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: But then you have to go through all these like
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: different training sessions et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: Wow, it's yeah, it sounds really exciting, pretty tough. I
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: want to explore it a bit more with you. So
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: this is what we would call back in the day
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: National Service, Like you have to do it, and can
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: we just explore again for our friends home, because I,
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: as I said to you earlier, I visited the thirty
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: eighth parallel. Oh yes, yeah, I went to the to
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: the Peace building which is on the on literally on
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: the parallel between or the parallel rather between North Korea
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: and South Korea. They said, to us, who wants to
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: go into North Korea? I was the only person on
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: the tour a whole bus of people that said I
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: want to go in the North Korea. Absolutely never never
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: say no to an opportunity, and as such, in the
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: peace building, they pointed to the line of microphones that
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: represented the thirty eighth parallel and said, step over there,
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: you're in North Korea. So I stepped over. And this
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: is a little bit of an aside now, but for
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: friends at home, that is one of the most satisfying,
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: grateful moments I have in my life of traveling. I'm
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: one of the very few people in the world that's
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: been in North Korea. Okay, it was tokenistic, I get that,
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: but you know, these kind of things for me piren
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: I just find things like that, so life beautiful and
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: special stuff like that comes along, you know. But have
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: I got this right? So you've got North Korea traditionally
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: run by the Jong Eel kind of dictatorship family, or
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: at least that's what we get told. You know, we
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: don't trust the news very much in this country anymore.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: And are they under the communist influence of China? Is
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: that historically how it worked?
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: Historically, I would say that North Korea was more reliant
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: on the Soviet Union. Well, they received aid heavily from
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: the Soviet Union and China. But after the Soviet Union
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: collapsed in ninety one, North Korea became completely reliant on
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: China basically, and when the Eastern Bloc collapsed in the
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: nineteen eighties, right, that was the beginning of the end
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: of North Korea as a not even relatively like tolerable society. Right,
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: if you read accounts about accounts from people who lived
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: in North Korea, they say that in the seventies, eighties
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: and until the nineties, they were quite well off because
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: of they because they were heavily subsidized by East Germany
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: and all those Eastern Bloc countries. But after ninety one
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: the Soviet Union collapsed, these Eastern European countries do not
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: care about North Korea anymore. So now they are on
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: they are supported by China.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: So yes, wow, it's quite a similar story to Vietnam,
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: wasn't it back in the you know, before the before
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: the Vietnam War. Yes, And so what is the feeling
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: then in South Korea about the North. Do you feel like, hey,
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: you're you're part of our country. We want you back.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: This is a this is a bad a bad government
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: up there. Or are you like, hey, we want nothing
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: to do with you with you you guys.
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: Well this is quite well. Number one is a controversial issue,
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: and I am my voice does not represent South Koreans whatsoever.
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: I personally still believe in reunification with the North UH,
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: and I genuinely hope to see that day come true
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: one day. However, from a realistic perspective, also, I understand
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: why many South Koreans, especially South Korean's my age who
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: are who have no no clue about North Korea, UH,
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: about Korea as a unified country. They have zero memory
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: of Korea as a unified country. Right East Germany was
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: only separate, I think for the wall came down in
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: eighty nine, and I think, what maybe since the fifties,
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: so like forty years I would say roughly of separation,
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: forty years of separation. But we've been separated at number
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: one for much longer than that, right, We've been two
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: separate countries. We had a war in the nineteen fifties,
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: so there's a lot of bad blood and animosity between
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: the two simply. But I want reunification. I believe reunification
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: is a good thing. But there are many South Koreans
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: my age who would disagree.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: Right, Yes, of course, always difficult these you know, sometimes
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: there's never an easy answer. Something is going to upset
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: somebody until absolutely until we start coming from a position
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: of love, and then that's a game change. If we
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: go from people and love first, perhaps it would be
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: I mean, is this very you know, the situation here
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: in Northern Ireland is it's just you can't have an
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: opinion on it. Any opinion you have, you're going to
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: upset loads of people. So it's especially if you're an outsider,
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: you probably better not to have an opinion on it.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: But yeah, really really really tough. And do they have
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: this nuclear arsenal up there that we're led to believe
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: or is that all? Do you think possibly propaganda fear
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: mongering from the media here, or how could that be?
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: I personally believe that North Korea has nuclear weapons, and
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: if not nuclear weapons, which I'm ninety nine point nine
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: nine percent sure, I'm not going to say one hundred
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: percent as a lawyer, but I'm going to say ninety
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: nine point nine nine percent sure, which I'm sure they have.
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: They also have the chemical weapons used in Syria. Right
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: in boot camp, they showed us these videos of very
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: graphic videos of the chemical warfare used in Syria, and
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: they told us that North Koreans have the same have
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: the same equipment available. Right, So, if not nuclear weapons,
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: they have other weapons at their disposal which can pose
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: a which pose a viable threat to Korean society.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: And we're led to believe. I always paraphrase stuff like
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: this because I am highly dubious of what you see
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: in the media, especially after nine to eleven. I think
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: I think everyone, just everyone, everyone I know just stop
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: believing in the TV then, right, and then we had
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: the medical thing and everyone's the same propaganda and gas
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: lighting and nonsense stuff. But we're led to believe that
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: there is desperate poverty up there for the kind of
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: common person. Can we say yes, yeah.
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: Oh.
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I believe that they are. Should I say that?
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: Life Number one, I'm very grateful to be born in
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: South Korea. I have South Korean citizenship, and I believe that,
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: at least to my knowledge, life in North Korea is abhorrent, right,
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: and I truly do pray that the Kim regime in
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: North Korea one day. However, what I am skeptical about
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: is when North Korean defectors come to South Korea and
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: it's this, this is the it's almost like a misery contest,
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: if you know what I mean, right, They have to
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: say they go on these TV shows and they talk
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: about how it's like this rapid race to the bottom.
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: This is what I call it, what I call it,
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: And do I believe them, Yes, absolutely. It's a terrible
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: country that is known for human trafficking and crystal meth.
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: But is it as bad as the media makes it sound.
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: I have zero clue. I have zero clue. I one
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: of the things, you know, one of the things that
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: I've learned as a as a serving in the military, honestly,
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: was unless you personally do something, you should be skeptical
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: about it. So, yeah, if I were a North Korean,
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: if I were, we actually have intelligence agents in North Korea.
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: So if I were one of them, and I'd been
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: an agent there for fifteen twenty years, I could give
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: you more objective, better feed. But unfortunately I was not.
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: James bond in North Korea. I was a twenty one
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: year old marine doing his national service.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: Wow, and so tell us then are you you know,
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: are you incursioning that's just a word I made up,
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: but into the north? Or do you have to stay
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: below the parallel? And what is your job role there?
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: Oh? As a recon marine? What's my job?
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah? I mean, obviously we know what reconnaissance marines do.
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: But I mean, are you sneaking into the quote unquote
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: enemy territory or are you do you very strictly have
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: to stay your side of the border. How does that work?
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: Let's see. The closest thing that I got to what
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: you were talking about is during the twenty eighteen Winter
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: yung Chang Olympics, our reconnaissance unit had to provide security
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: for the Olympics, and a security included I don't know
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: if this is extramely smart or extremely stupid, but we
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: had to go through the mountains of pan through the
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: mountains of Pyeongchang. I'm not kidding you. With these like
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: spiky little World War one bayonets, like not even World
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: War two. They're like something can see in like a
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: film about the American Revolutionary War. Like these, like spiky
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: little bayonets. We just spike these random places in the
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: grounds looking for alleged spies. We've we've found a few
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: lost tourists, but that was about it. No North Korean
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: spies that I've seen, unfortunately.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: So, did you do any work up at the what
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: do they call the thirty eighth Parallel? Do they call
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: it the the DMZ? Sorry, the D Military Ah, is
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: there a clue that it's the D Military Zone? That
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: there's no military allowed there?
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: Oh? No, the D mill. The DMZ is kind of
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: the worst lie in twentieth century history. It's the most
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: militarized zone in the world, which is quite funny, but
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: it's personally Have I gone up there? And yes, yes
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: and no. So I'm I was stationed at First Reconnaissance Battalion,
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: and First Reconnaissance Battalion is located in Poe honk, South Korea,
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: So we're, uh, we're quite south. We're far away from
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: the border as far as as far as way you
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: can get. But at Second Recon Battalion, our sister unit.
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: Shout out to all the second Recon boys watching this.
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: Our second Recon unit, they they they they are stationed
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: in Gimpo, South Korea. So do you know the Inchon Airport,
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: in Chon Airport where you fly in, it's quite it's
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: near that area. It's in that area. So that's where
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: the second recon unit is. And from what I understand,
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: they're the ones who are our operational unit, so they
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: they do. I guess the more North Korean, the more
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: more more more military stuff. Whereas in Poehung, South Korea,
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: where we're kind of the I shouldn't say this, but
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: we're the the Pamfert show dogs. Like where the dudes
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: who go on the recruiting coasters with the with the
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: guns right, who like in our face as black and
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: go on TV right, got, Yeah, we're those guys, and
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: they're the dudes for like firing AK forty sevens daily
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: right at the shooting range.
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: Wow, so much to cover here. Let's go back to
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: your training then. Could you give an example In the
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: British Marines at the end, we have a series of
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: it's cool commando tests and you have five, yeah, five tests,
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: including a swimming test which is quite quite hard to pass.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: The swimming. The swimming test was the hardest one for me.
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: Do you have like a test week like that at
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: the end of your training.
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: Not exactly a test week. Our our training was so
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: you have to so for example, to enter reconnaissance school,
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: you have to pass the basic TT test, and in
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: recon school it's basically what is it like twelve weeks
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: of getting hayes repeated, you know, like like waking up
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: at dawn running with rocks on your backpack. I guess
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: one of them would be we have a we have
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: a we have a Hell week right with like no
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: food and no sorry not not no food, I'm exaggerating,
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: like little food, little sleep, little water. Hell Week was
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: for me personally, Hell Week was our Hell Week was
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: called easy because for the first time in Hell Week history,
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: we were given what was it like, ninety seconds a
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: day to use the bathroom. So until our classes we
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: had zero bathroom times, so like you had to go
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: in your pants obviously, but for us, we had ninety
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: seconds to like run and use the bathroom a day
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: and that was considered like we were we were considered kindergarteners.
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: In uniform. Everybody was like, oh, you guys have it easy.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: In the British rooms, they'd love that. Any anything to
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: do with urine and wetting yourself. I always fused down well,
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: believe it or not, so diving this sounds incredible. I've
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: been fortunate. I funnily enough started my diving pastime in
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: the Marines. We got given a scuba diving course. This
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: is a funny story for your piron. We went diving
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: in wet suits, so not dry suit, just wet suits.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: They were very thick, they were about seven mil and
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: they were good. They really did the job, no problem.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: But we went in in it was minus two degrees celsius,
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: so the coldest part of the British winter February, and
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: the conditions were so murky that there was The visibility
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: was about one meter and the dive master he said, right, guys,
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: we better rope together because I you know, I don't
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: want to lose one of you. And that was good safety,
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: and we're going to go in from the shore. So
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: we went and sat down in the water, we put
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: our fins on, then we stood up and we inched
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: out into the sea and then we all sunk under
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: the water as per our training, and we finned like
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: two or three fins and suddenly we're looking ahead and
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: there's a rabbit like this swimming underwater, right, swimming like
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: this underwater to meet us, and all three of us
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: just stood up at the same time and looked at
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: each other. And then the dive, the dive lead he
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: just went, it's dead and it had fallen off a cliff.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: It rolled into the sea. This poor rabbit. You know,
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: we have rabbits where I live, you know, white wild rabbits,
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: And it had drowned, obviously, but underwater it it looked
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: like it was swimming. It looked like it was swimming.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: So I had a crazy start to my dive career.
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: And then I did all the paddy course, I did
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: the advance, the advanced course in Central America, and then
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: I went on expedition to the Anti Polar Circle and
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: obviously had to do the dry suit training for that,
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: which was fascinating that I found it really really difficult
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: with the buoyancy, I think.
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: So, how was it for you?
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: Was diving? Was this the first time you'd done this
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: in your life?
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah? I was. I was actually quite a good swimmer, thankfully.
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: My Yeah, my father, he always took me to the
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: swimming pool when I was five or six, so I was.
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: I was a very good swimmer. Unfortunately, I'd never touched
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: scuba diving equipment until I joined the military, So I
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: think what happened. I think on the first day, like
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: we were playing around with the scuba diving equipment on land,
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: and like before the training had even begun, I almost
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: broke the equipment. That would that have put me in
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: the good graces of the instructors. But then we we
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: have to do. We do what swimming it's swimming pool dives,
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: and then we have to do ocean dives. And the
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: ocean dives for me were quite crazy because again where
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: I was stationed in po Hoong, South Korea, it's right,
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: it's literally the scuba die facility is right next to this,
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: uh I think iron mill. This Pasco is a giant factory.
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: So twenty four to seven, they're just pumping sewage, waste,
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: whatever you name it, into the water into the ocean.
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: To give you an idea of how filthy it is,
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure you know, like you know, you know
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: marine life, right, like all the marine animals you can
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: find none of them in po Hong. It's just starfish. Yeah,
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: And if you put your hand in front of your face,
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: you can't see it because of the pollution.
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, got it.
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, So that was But one thing that I'm
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: very grateful for the scuba course is I developed a
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: sense of confidence in my map finding abilities. Going up,
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: I got lost in my own neighborhood, like I was.
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: I was that kid, Like I'd like I'd go into
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: like the wrong classrooms at school, right, I'd always get
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: lost on the way home, even if the home was
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: like five minutes away from school. So that's that's how I.
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: I was very poor with directions. But as you know,
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: I'm sure you know this. In scuba school, you have
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: the underwater I forget what it's called, the underwater compass. Yeah,
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: that clutched to your chest. And I for the first time,
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: I for the first time in my life, I had
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: to rely solely on myself to find the directions, like
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: for the first time in my life. And I first
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: I got screamed out a lot by the instructors for
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: doing a terrible job. But eventually I got the hang
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: of it. So ever since then, like whenever, like traveling
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: or whatever. That gave me a newfound sense of confidence
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: really because I'm like, now after this, I can like
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: if I can find myself underwater in the most polluted
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: ocean on Earth, right, I can find myself anywhere.
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: Yes, incredible. Yes, they always said to us during our training,
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: trust the compass. And you can see when we went
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: out on patrol, you know, there was we had quite
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: a big troop in training. So we've got maybe five
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: for six, maybe even eight sections out out out there,
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: or half sections, and gradually they all start going like this,
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: like following each other. It's guys, just trust your own
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: comfy you know. And what it was a human weakness,
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: it's it's the I'd rather follow them and be wrong
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: than risk you know, going on this bearing that I'm
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure about. Yeah, that that kind of that
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: kind of would happen. Some guys were really good at
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: the map reading. Oh my god.
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: They Yeah, they that natural instinct.
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's I didn't ever quite get there. I'd quite
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: often be put my torch on in the dark, which
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: is a big no. The hell, where the hell have
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: we got to go now? But so did you use
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: did you use dry suits at all?
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: Me personally though, because I went through in a in
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: a in a winter, sorry, in a summer. Course. I
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: went through scuba school in a summer course, so I
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: personally did not use use dry suits. I personally did
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: not use them. But guys who went through winter winter
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: winter courses are winter training, they had they had, they
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: they got experience, uh dry suits. Yeah.
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: And did you dive with with your weapons?
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: Oh? Yes, that was not fun? Yeah?
• 38:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: And which weapon was it? Because I guess it's one
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: that doesn't go rusty?
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: Uh No, it's it's the thing is that they don't
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: actually we don't. This is they don't give you your weapon.
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: They give you like a rusted up prop should I say,
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: like unusable weapon? Unusable weapons. So they gave us like
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: these rusted up k ones. Uh that that obviously did
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: not have the mechan the bolt and the mechanisms to
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: actually shoot.
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we call that decommissioned de committee decommissioned rifles. Yes, yeah,
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: it's the same for us. When we did our swimming test,
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: you got given an old lie Enfeld. I think it was, Yeah,
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: I see kind of. I don't know. It was like
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: Vietnam era or before they had the the is it
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: the M one or the sixteen? I might be getting
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: that wrong. I'm not like a big I'm not really
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: a big military person. I just was in the military
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: for a while. Fascinating And you did jump school?
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: What correct?
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we when we went through jump school, we call
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: it here the power course, as in the parachute course.
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: Our first jump was from a balloon, from a helium balloon,
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: which was Ah, that was just honestly, if you could
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: hire a balloon and some parachutes for your stag do
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: or your birthday or something, have a few beers and
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: then get up there and just throw, you'd have the
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: you'd have the most memorable birthday ever ever. Did you
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: have a similar experienced pirate?
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, absolutely we uh And yeah, jump school is
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: relatively short compared to scuba school. So jump school is
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: three weeks uh in Korea. Uh And because for two
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: weeks they just you know, as you know, they hate
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: the daylights out of you. And then in the third
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: week they treat you like a human and you jump
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: from like an aircraft. So yes, first we did the
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: helium balloon, I think helium bloom like two or three times.
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: Two or three times. That was quite fun. And then
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: we were quite lucky because I got to jump from
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: a Chinook helicopter and a C one thirty helicopter. And
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: what I what I found later that was crazy.
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: Was uh, so we have a you said, see one
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: thirty Do you do you mean see one thirty plane?
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: Yes, correct, see one thirty the plane. Yeah, going thirtyd
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: the plane. So we had we had the DZ that
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: drops zone. But what I found out after jumping from
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: the C one thirty. So I jumped from the C
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: one thirty. That was my I think that was my
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: final jump in airborne school, in jump school, so that
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: was my final jump. But then I found out when
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: I was doing joint training with the US Marines, we
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: were talking about like, oh, yeah, yeah, we should we
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: should get the Sea one thirty to jump here, and
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: the US Marines they took one look at it and
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: they said, that is out of our safety riggs. So
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: it's like, boy, what do you mean I jumped it
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: last year And they're like, no, that's that's not that's
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: outside of the US military safety regulations. I'm sorry, we can't.
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: We can't do it with Sea one thirties. We can
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: do it with helicopters, but we can't do it with
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: SE one thirties. It's it'd be too dangerous. Yeah. I
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: was like I wish I knew that before jumping.
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: I loved that course. I it was just I think
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: the most fun thing, probably one of the most fun
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: things I've ever done in my life. I mean, skydiving,
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: that's that's great, that's great. But to be in the
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: military and to actually be paid to throw yourself out
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: of balloons and aeroplanes, oh, I just yeah, I really
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: appreciate that time in my life. Yeah, that was amazing.
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: Have you ever done skydiving, not outside of the military,
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: not just just the jump course and other jumps after
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: graduating from the jump course.
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, skydiving is incredible.
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: Imagine.
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I said to my instructor, can I can I
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: do like a Can I summersault out the airplane? He said, Chris,
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: your train, You're a trained skydiving now you can do
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: what the hell you want. That was like free licensed.
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah that was fun. That was fun. Okay, can we
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: just talk about your wonderful flag?
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: Oh? Yes, my Korean flag?
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, I'm going to tell you my understanding and
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: then you can tell me like if I'm right or
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: whether they teach you guys something different. But you've got
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: the four elements there, air, water, air, and fire relates
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: to enlightened consciousness. And you got the ying and the yang,
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: which is your masculine energy, your feminine ninjy, or you're
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: electric and your magnetic or electromagnetism. The blue and the
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: red is symbolic. Blue is the magnet, red is electric.
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: And what they do in Western culture is they use
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: those colors to separate people. So in a boxing match,
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: there's a blue and there's a red. Yep, they don't
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: want people to have it, and it represents, you know,
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: the two hemispheres of your brain. They don't ever want
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: people to like sink themselves and become enlightened. So they
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: always put these colors apart. And they do it in
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: politics with you vote for the blue. You know in
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: England the blue is conservative, the red is labor. I
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: have never voted, but I think it's like that's your flag,
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: is the only flag that's really it's spiritual. Have I
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: got that right?
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah? It represents the four corners of the universe, the elements.
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: I believe you are a corrector.
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: Yes, wow, incredible and pirene. You've been on something of
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: a spiritual journey yourself.
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: Yes, that's that's correct.
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, before we come on and talk about that.
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: You mentioned hazing in our communications, hazing for friends at home.
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: Is it's this one of these unspoken about things that
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: we're now going to speak about that goes on in
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: the military, and it's it's very it's it's highly controversial,
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: you can say, because it's when you induct somebody into
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: your unit as what we call a sprague, which is
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: like a youngster, you know, someone still still green around
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: the gills, greenhorn they call them in in in the
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: fishing industry, and you basically have kind of a boy's
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: night where everyone gets super drunk and it all starts
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: getting a bit violent, a bit kind of like masochistic.
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: I was gonna say sexual, but masochistic can be. You know,
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: you can find things being stuck into places where they
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: weren't really supposed to be. It only ever, I never
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: experienced this. In my time in the Marines, I have
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: to say. I came across bullies, people that were there
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: just to make other people's lives misery, and you've got
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: to kind of equip yourself accordingly, conduct yourself accordingly with
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: them guys or they and you know, you just got
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: to punching basically, or they are going to keep coming
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: for you unless they're an awful lot bigger than you,
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: and you kind of sometimes you got to just take
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: what's what comes. But as far as the hazing goes,
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: it was never really a thing. While I was in
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: we would have some real drunken nights, some silly stuff
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: would go on. One we had some servicemen join us
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: from another unit from another country, and you know, I
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: probably shouldn't say this, but he went back to his
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: superiors and said the marine sexually assaulted me. I shouldn't laugh.
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: I shouldn't laugh, but I do. I do kind of
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: know the mentality that's going on there. And anyway, one time,
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: though Pirate, it did come to light and it got
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: into the media. Someone had taken photos and side how
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: they got leaked to the mainstream media. And it was
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: a bunch of guys, you know, in a big circle, naked,
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: all clearly very drunk, smacking the hell at each other
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: with roll Matt who used to put the sleeping mats
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: on their arms, and going you know as a boxing match,
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: and probably I'm guessing a whole load of other stuff
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: went on. But yeah, I got nothing to say about it.
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: I mean, you're joining a job where your job is
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: to close with the enemy, which is essentially other young
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: men who've done nothing to you, and you've got to
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: kill them. You know, it's a nasty job and it,
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: as we know, it can traumatize people for the rest
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: of their life. So I'm not even gonna you know,
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: I'm going to say there's worse things that go on
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: in the world than a bit of hazing. And that's
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: not me saying it's okay. And it's not me saying
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: it's not okay. People have gone away and committed suicide
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: off the back of it, or certainly off off the
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: back of feeling bullied. And you know, no one's going
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: to support that, but you mentioned it. What was your experience?
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: I okay. What I'll say about this on camera is
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: that our unit is a rear echelon unit, so we're
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: not at the front, like facing North Korea all the time,
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: and our unit doesn't actually see action Like there are
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: frontline units that are kind of exposed to the regular
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: dangers of being near the DMZ and stuff, and then
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: there's our unit. And needless to say, there are a
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: few bad apples that can make your life hell, especially
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: if they're if they're bored, right, So we have these
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: periods of we have these periods of complete we have
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: these periods of complete boredom and just hard charging training.
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: And during the periods of boredom is when things get
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: pretty bad. I'm you know, I personally was, well, here's
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: the thing, like I shouldn't say this, but again for
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: men of like my generation, like hazing wasn't considered hazing.
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: It was just like what you had. It was like automatic.
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: Like for example, when I was when I was a private,
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: like the first class, like a sprug so to say, right,
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: I like I cleaned the toilets daily with my with
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: my bare hands, like including scraping the excrement off of
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: the toilet seats. Right, But I mean I genuinely don't
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: consider that hazing, right, right. If anything, it'll make me
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: a better, you know, better husband in the future, better
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: father in the future. But there were I was genuinely lucky.
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: But I have my friends who are in other units.
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: They said that the hazing was it was like really bad,
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: as in there would be guys getting getting beaten every night,
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: that kind of stuff. And what's what's really interesting is
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: that the less training your unit does the more hazing
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: there seems to be so at least that's that, that's
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: what the saying goes in South Korea. So if you
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: if you, if you're a recon marine and you're constantly
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: like going to the going to the range and parachuting
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: and scuba diving, you don't really have that much time
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: to to haze or be hazed. But if you're in
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: a in like an artillery unit or radar air defense unit,
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: where all you do is lie around watching the seat
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: the security cameras, then that's what I heard, things can
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: get quite nasty.
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting you say that. I mean, there's so
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: much here that an outside it is not going to
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: understand because you need to have your mental anchors into
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: military culture and yourself and war to even begin to
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: understand the complex dynamics involved in military rituals. And what
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: I would say is you and I'm not you know,
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: I'm totally I think wars a load of shit. I
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: honestly think it's it's basically the you know, the European aristocracy,
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: bloodline bankers that sit around the table plan who they're
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: going to fund next, and the average person'story has no
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: clue about this, so they always you know, they're very
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: easy to rile up, as are the military, who all
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: want to go and do their job. You know that
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: that was No one wants to get left behind when
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: there's a war, doesn't even matter if that war's not
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: a just war or you've invaded, you know, a sovereign nation.
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: You don't want to be the one that goes. I
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: did all that training and I didn't go. I stayed
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: behind protecting the camp.
• 51:04
  Speaker 4: You know.
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: But what I'm getting to is if you did find
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: yourself on the front line in Afghanistan and you are
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: scrapping it out with the Taliban, you need to know
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: that that guy next you, he's just got your back.
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: And it's through things like we called it beasting. It's
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: through proving yourself that you've got what it takes to
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: wear the green berry. And it's through having wild nights
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: of hazing where stuff goes on that only you guys know,
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: you know, only you can understand and know about that.
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: It takes on a different you know, it takes on
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: a role other than bullying. The sad thing is is
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: that there's always going to be that very damaged, psychologically
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: damage marine that takes it too far and he decides
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: he's gonna you know, I don't even want to say it,
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: but you know, he's just going to do something really
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: cross that boundary. And I say that because when you
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: offend someone else like that is that's you. You've then
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: damaged that person. You know, you've traumatized that person and
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: they've got to live with that. And it's you know,
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: it's a bit like private pile, wasn't it in the film?
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you know it's okay you can kind of
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: you can. You can have harsh words with someone, but
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: when you beat the shit out of them while they're asleep,
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: that's like fuck you. You know that that and that's
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: not nice. You know, they got round a lad when
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: I was in training and they chuck they gave him.
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: They call it the bath, and the bath is you
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: run a bath and you fill it with everything horrible.
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: I'm talking and I'm not even going to say on camera.
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: I think people can. People can work out what you
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: would not want to get in a bath with, you know,
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: even things like brass so shoe you know, shoe polish
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: and metal polish and all. And I'm not going to
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: say like I've never bullied anyone in my life, because
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: that would be a lie. I'm very fortunate. I normally
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: stay out of these things. But I do remember one
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: kid at school. I was horrible to him one day
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: and a girl and a girl, and I realized it
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: was because I was going through a very damaged childhood myself,
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: and I was putting it onto them, right. So I'm
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: I'm kind of glad that I wasn't that kind of marine.
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: But there were a lot of the lads that were
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: really up for chucking this kid in that bath, and
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: they did, and I just thought, you know, I kind
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: of get it all, but like, how can that guy
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: there ever trust you again on the battlefield. I would
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: be looking to shoot you in the back if you
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: did that to me. And I'm not joking. I know
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: what it's I you know, I got really let down
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: by people in a high stress situation once Pyron and
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: you know, excuse my French, but they fucked with me
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: and it yeah, and I didn't deserve that, you know.
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: And I had someone on my podcast and he had
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: a tent full of his comrades in Vietnam. I say,
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: comrade that they'd all turned against him. And he knew
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: they were going to kill him, right, and yeah, and
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: it was wasn't his fault, it was just this this
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: fracture had developed in there. They were all intelligence operatives,
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: you know, And he said, Chris, I just got a grenade.
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: I lifted up the flap of their tent and I
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: rolled it in and I killed all six of them.
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: And you know, it's a serious old job, the military,
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: you know, it a serious old job. And on that note, friends,
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: we're now going to come around with popcorn and candy
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: floss for your interval. Just relax. No, it's good that
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: we can have these conversations, you know, And I know
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: every person listening out there is quietly getting something out
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: of this. You know, what was it going to say? Yeah,
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: did you have any examples where it really went wrong
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: for an individual?
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah? There were, there were There were two two cases
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: which I'm not going to go into detail, like because
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: I don't know who's going to watch this in the future, right.
• 55:06
  Speaker 4: So, there were, uh, specifically two occasions where I or
• 55:12
  Speaker 4: I experienced some uh some things that I genuinely would
• 55:16
  Speaker 4: not wish on anybody else.
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: Uh that you know, it's it's it's it's quite shameful
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: to talk about. You know. So you you can, you can,
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: you can imagine, you can imagine what it is. It's
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: it's this was not like hazy, This is not like
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: do one hundred push ups right or some something like that.
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: It was not that kind of stuff or like spar
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: with a dude for ten minutes. It wasn't that kind
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: of stuff. It's it's got nothing to do with improving
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: your combat efficiency, like nothing about building brotherhoods. Just about
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: humiliation and control, right, humiliation and control. And I I
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: agree that you're right. It really does kind of destroy
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: your destroy your trust in society, uh in the military,
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: in that brotherhood brotherhood stuff. So I so I think
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: that I think that people and honestly, I think people
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: instinctively know when when you take things too far, like
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: I I messed up on my I messed up. I
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: think on my parachute during my parachute training once I
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: made a mistake. Okay, I made a mistake that I
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: should not have made. Okay, and my, uh my my.
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: Do you have master sergeants in the UK Master sergeants?
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: I think they we'd call them color sergeants.
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: Oh, okay, color sergeants. Yeah, so my my, my my
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: master's sergeant, my color sergeant. He just bam like blindsided me,
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: like with the good old like wake up like love tap. Right.
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: But I would not consider that hazing at all. Right,
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: And in fact, after I got out of the military,
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: I sent him a birthday card when it was his birthday.
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: So I do not I am not considered that hazing
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: at all. But the some on two occasions, I experienced
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: something that I genuinely should not have did. I did
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: not deserve it.
• 56:58
  Speaker 4: Uh.
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: And it's still I still don't go to military reunions
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: to avoid this individual.
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: So yeah, that's a tough one the military reunions. If
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: I can offer my ten cents worth of the advice,
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: i'd say, go, ok.
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: It's the reason being is if it's anything like my experience.
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: You know, I've had a couple of guys in the
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: past that, yeah, they I would say we didn't get on,
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: but that's not true. I thought the world of them,
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: like I do most people. I thought they were great,
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: but they just didn't like me.
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: In fact, no, sorry, I'm talking about two different people,
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: you know. One of them he just didn't like me, right,
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: and it was it was hard for me because I
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: had nothing against the guy. You know, we'd never fallen
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: out anything like this. It's just you're under an awful
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: lot of pressure in the military in certain situations, and
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: his vent he was venting on to me right. And
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: I had another guy that we had a fit, you know,
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: a fistfight, and it was over you know, it was
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: over something really stupid, like we were playing foot football
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: and he was going in really hard all the time.
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: It's just just stupid, like this is just a pet
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: session in the morning. You know, you don't have to
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: prove you And on like the third time he came
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: and we call it hacked me. I just turned around
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: and shoved him and it was just, you know, it
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: was silly. It was nothing anyway. And later on he
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: just came up behind me and turned around and that
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: was it. We had to fight. And anyway, what I'm
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: getting at is the first reunion, the first guy come
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: up and not only was he just absolutely great with me,
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: but he then went and really helped sponsor one of
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: my big charity endurance running events, and he was just
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: he was just great, you know, just and the other reunion,
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: I went to the first guy I'm chatting to I'm
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: there with a beer, just chatting with this guy and
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: he's telling me all about his life and what he's doing,
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: and I'm telling him about and then I suddenly realized
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: it's the guy. It's the you know, he changed quite
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: a lot, but it was the guy. The guy had
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: a fight with And there we are just chatting away,
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: and then the next thing you know, he's added me
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: on Facebook. And I would just say to anybody out there,
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: don't don't not go to your reunion because because there's
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: something that maybe happened historically, because everybody like changes and grows,
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: and if you did go and the guy is still
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: a dick, then you can just get a taxi and
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: go home.
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: Right, That's actually a very good point. Yeah, that's a
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: very good point because I've changed too, Like I was,
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: I was very different at twenty one and twenty two
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: as a marine than I am now at twenty nine. Right,
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: So I was not nice to some people, but but
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: I actually I apologize to them quite sincerely, and I
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: received their apology that they're their forgiveness as well.
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and despite what anyone might think, what I'm saying
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: about my experience of service. I tell you this, there's
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: something so special about being a raal Marine. And I'm
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: not promoting the military here, I'm just saying you meet
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: some of the best human beings on the planet. You
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: get to share something that you just cannot explain to
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: someone who hasn't been there, and you develop a bond
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: that means that you don't have to see someone for
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: thirty five years. Yea, the second you see them, you're
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: just straight back into that you know, that friendship and
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: that connection. And yeah, that's that's most people in my experience,
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: that was most people in the Marines. It's just like
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: any job, You're going to get a few bad eggs, right,
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: and you know, that's just kind of how it is.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: But so, Pyron, let's talk about leaving because anyone who's
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: read my book, it's up there above our heads at
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: the moment, eating smoke. That's the story of how I
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: ended up homeless in Hong Kong, chronically addicted crystal meth
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: and working as a nightclub dorman in a Wan Chai
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: nightclub district. And yeah, you know, I thought the Marines
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: was my growing curve whatever, that my learning curve. I
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: didn't even realize my learning hadn't even started until I left,
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: you know, yes, yes, how was your experience of leaving?
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: My experience of leaving was it was quite a bitter,
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: bitter sweet. I left. And it's quite funny and strange
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 2: because when I was, when I was on my final
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: month so of national service, I had this pinup calendar
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 2: right with the dates on it, and then I was
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: just like counting down the days. Still, I'm going right,
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: counting on the days, and then I go out and
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: when i'm I met my father at the bus to
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 2: my father came to pick me up at the bus terminal.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: It was quite It was the one of the very
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: few times that I've seen him shed tears and it
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 2: was quite. It's it's it's it's like you. I genuinely
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 2: returned to Korea to to the military, to become a
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: I returned. I came back home a man, right.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 3: Uh.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 2: But at the same time, a few weeks after my discharged,
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 2: my grandmother, who had helped raise me, she passed away,
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 2: so uh so that was quite sad. But at the
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: same time, the last time I saw her, I was
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: a sergeant on on leaf. I was a sergeant on leaf,
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: so I had I had my whole uniform with like
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 2: my patches and all the whole get up right, you know,
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 2: so like big, tough, strong grandson. Uh. And that was
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: the last image that she has of me. It's it's
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: of me wearing the uniform, right with the beret, right
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: with the scuba dive parachute wings, everything like and like
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: big and strong. So uh, that's her last memory of me.
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 2: And I guess that's that was quite a quite bittersweet
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: as well thinking about it. And then after a few
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: months I went back to university and all I did
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: was all I did was drink and be obnoxious. I'll
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: be I'll be honest. Okay, all I did was drink
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: and scream and be obnoxious. All I would do is
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: I'd find other I find other dudes who've been in
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: the Marines, and then we just gather and drink and
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 2: like swear and say like terrible things. And it's I
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 2: think it's an it's a part of life that every
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: man who's done military service goes through. But at the
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: same time, I think it's you're kind of also like
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 2: an obnoxious piece of garbage, especially right when you're right,
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 2: we're right when you've left the military. You've got some
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: money in the bank account, right, you think you're more
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 2: mature than the other men, and you think the world
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: of yourself, right, So I made the most out of
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 2: my time. It didn't It also helped that I think
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: after the military was like the the brief two years
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 2: after the military when I was like fit and full
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 2: of testosterone, like that was the time when I was
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: the most attractive to like the opposite gender. Like that
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 2: was the only time in my life where I had
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 2: like women actively like hitting on me, like constantly. Before
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 2: I became yeah, before I before I lost, before I
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 2: got bent out of shape again. But it was I
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: was Honestly, I was quite lost. Number one. I was
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: quite lost, and I had a very serious drinking problem.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 2: It was just drinking, drinking, drinking, meeting, meeting girls that
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: I probably shouldn't have met, and then more drinking. Right.
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 2: That That was basically my That was my two years
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 2: right after the military.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: What what do you think you were trying to bury
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: with the drinking?
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 2: I think, well, here on, okay, here's a here's a
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 2: here's a Do you have do you have time for
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: a good story?
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, absolutely, okay beats working?
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah on twenty seven. In twenty seventeen, on my birthday,
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 2: it was March twenty third, that's my birthday. So on
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 2: twenty seventeen, March twenty third, I was, I was, I
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: was crying, and I was. I was heartbroken, right because
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 2: I'd recently broken up with my college girlfriend. So I
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: was heartbroken. I was crying in front of all of
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: my friends twenty seventeen March, and all my friends looked
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 2: at me, and you know, it's like, it's a very
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: masculine environment rights. It's honestly quite humiliating to break down
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 2: in front of your friends like that, at least where
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 2: I'm from. So I was, I was. I made a
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 2: promise to myself. I was, I was crying, I was crazy,
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: and I said, in one year, I'm going to be
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 2: a trueman, right, I'm going to be like a recomer
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 2: and a trueman one year from now. So I made
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 2: that promise with myself. And then fast forward twenty eighteen.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 2: It's my twenty second birthday. Twenty eighteen is my twenty
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: second birthday, and there, unfortunately, there was a lieutenant colonel
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 2: in the Marine Corps, I believe quite unfortunately he had
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: committed suicide. I believe he had committed suicide or it
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: was an accident of some sort and he had driven
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 2: his car off of a cliff basically, and it was
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: our unit because our unit is the only dive qualified
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 2: unit in that area, and he's a military man, so
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 2: it was on us to go out and find his
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 2: corpse and or him if he were still alive. So
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 2: the problem was that we were a bare bones unit,
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: like the what do you call it? Like the majority
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 2: of our men had left to the Olympics to defend
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 2: the twenty eighteen Olympics, the Cometo Olympics, so we were,
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 2: I don't know what you would call it, like the
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 2: garrison troops, like the bare bones.
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: We say they've been deployed and your I think Americans
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: call it the rear guard, but we we used to
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: call it. Oh my god, it'll come to me, but
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: I know what you mean.
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So we were the rear. We were basically left behind,
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 2: and it was a bunch of it was me and
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 2: I had zero training at that point in my life,
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: like zero military training. It was before I went through
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 2: the schools and all that stuff in the parachute schools.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 2: So it was just me, and I'm basically a glorified
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 2: toilet cleaner who's gone to the shooting range a few times,
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 2: and it was just these krusty NCOs who didn't want
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 2: to be there, who were like counting down the days
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 2: until retirement. So like a really bad combination. All the
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 2: all the young fit braves have gone, right, so it
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: was just us left.
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: So I just remember we called it rear party.
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: Part Okay, rear party. So so that was us. And
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 2: I was told suddenly that I was going to be
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 2: part of the rescue unit. Right, so again like I
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 2: have not at this point in my military career, I
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 2: have received zero training aside from going to the shooting
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 2: range a few times and like swimming in the swimming pool.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah all right, so I've had zero military training at
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 2: this point. And I was given I was basically I
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 2: was throwing a wet suit, right, I was throwing a wetsuit,
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 2: and I was told put it on, we're going out.
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 2: So my job was there would be there would be
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 2: two divers underwater, and then there would be me on
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 2: the top, kind of like a swimming and bobbing on
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 2: top of the ocean while the two drivers they they
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 2: do their thing underwater and I'm the tender on top.
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: So that was And then again keep in mind, I
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 2: had had zero military training at this point. Okay, I've
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: never swim in the ocean like at all until now,
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 2: and I don't know what to do. But I have
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 2: this suit on me and they literally just like scream
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 2: at me to jump into the water. But I jump
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 2: into the water. I try and do my job. It's
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 2: it's not the most dangerous thing that I've done, but
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 2: it's at that time it was the most fearful. Again,
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: because I was untrained, I have I have to emphasize this.
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 2: I was untrained. So I'm in the march threean ocean,
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 2: and I have the lives of these two men in
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 2: my hands, and I'm just filled with fear, right, I'm
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 2: just like from the top of my head to my toes,
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 2: like just fear just flowing through me. And unfortunately we
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 2: don't find the body. And then we slowly make it
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 2: to land. Right, We make it to land, and I
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 2: come out of the water. Right. I wasn't in any
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 2: actual physical danger, right because I had my white suit on, right,
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 2: and there was there were a few boats around us too,
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 2: so I wasn't gonna. I wasn't going to go missing
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 2: or anything. And then I get to the land and
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 2: I see these two girls, her elementary who must have
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 2: been like nine or ten years old, right, nine or
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 2: ten years old, and they at first time, I first
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 2: the first thing that I thought was, what are these
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 2: like tourists doing here? This is the worst place to
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 2: go on a tour, right, And then I found and
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 2: then I walked closer to them, and one of the
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 2: one of the girls, the older sister, I think, she
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 2: began to ask me where her father was, and I
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 2: could hear her voice breaking, But and the younger one
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 2: doesn't really have a clue as to what's going on, right,
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 2: doesn't have a clue as to what's going on. So
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 2: the older sister asks me where her father is or
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 2: where her daddy is, and I'm clueless, like I don't
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 2: know what to say to her, like so like my
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 2: whole so I've been like, like she looks at me,
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 2: and she sees like Superman, right, especially when you're that
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 2: age and you're like ten years old, you see like
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 2: this recon marine and he's like Superman, right, And I
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 2: literally had nothing to tell the girls. So like this
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 2: girl is just looking up at me. She's asking me
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 2: where her father is. Uh, And like, I know because
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 2: I've been a kid and I've looked up to soldiers before, right,
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 2: So I know that she thinks the world of me, right,
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 2: that I'm going to go in there and like find
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 2: her father and and bring him back home. Right. But
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 2: she but I let her down, right, I let her down.
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 2: I think it was about a week later it was
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 2: a group of tourists who found the body that had
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 2: that had washed down onto the onto the beaches. So yeah,
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 2: for the I think for two years after I left
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 2: the military. It wasn't the training, like the cold, the swimming,
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 2: that's just that comes. That's part of being a marine, right,
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 2: Like the cold, the fear of the training, right, that's
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 2: is part of being a marine. But I think the
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 2: the guilt that I let this girl down. Right after,
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 2: so I'm like brainwashing myself into thinking that I'm this
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 2: you know, big bat, tough marine. But at the end
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 2: of the day, I let this girl down. So I
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 2: think that really made me quite quite guilty, right, It's yeah,
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 2: So for two years I couldn't sleep. I just didn't
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 2: know what to do with myself. Because if you look
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 2: at my discharge papers. They like, they give you discharge
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 2: papers and they make you out to be some kind
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 2: of like like if you look at my my my
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 2: military record, they made me look like Gi Joe. Right,
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 2: But Gi Joe and I got the military all the
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 2: training in right, I probably received like the top one
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 2: percent of training that most Korean guys receive. So like
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 2: the media and like everybody around you tells you, oh
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 2: you're this like cool, you know, badass recon marine, but
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 2: inside I'm a piece of garbage who let that girl down? Right?
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 2: So like, so I think that cognitive dissonance really destroyed
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 2: me for a while. Yeah, So all I did was
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 2: I drink. There are a lot of times when I
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 2: couldn't I couldn't sleep, so I drink. Right, I had
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 2: a I had a bottle of Korean liquor on my bedstand. Right,
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 2: I drink. And I've had many situations where like girls
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 2: tell me, you know, it's either me or the bottle,
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 2: like one leaves and I'd be like, oh that's easy,
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 2: you go, bottle stays right. So yeah, so yeah, that's
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 2: I think that overwhelming sense of guilt, especially after being
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 2: told like oh you're this, you know, big hero recon guy, right,
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 2: airborne scuba diver, you know, so, you know, cool, but
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 2: after after people think of that. But you know, that
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 2: your garbage, you know what I mean, Like that's I
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 2: think that killed me for a long time.
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: But now they call it survivor's guilt, don't they.
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and yeah, it was. It was that. And
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 2: also there was there was another incident. I guess there
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 2: was another incident where on in twenty eighteen, there was
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 2: a training there was a it was actually our I
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 2: was in Ricon, I was in recon school. And I'm
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 2: sure you're familiar with the helo casting right where there's
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 2: like the helicopter and then like you jump out of
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 2: the helicopter into the water with your white suit. It's
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 2: not parachuting. It's just like you're in your wet suit
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 2: and you'd jump back into the water.
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah right, I've never done it, but I know what
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: you mean.
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 2: We were supposed to go on this helocasting mission and
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 2: the Marine Corps was using these Marine Corps was using
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 2: these be it up hand me downs basically from the
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 2: army or Army or Navy, and there was a there
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 2: was an incident where in twenty eighteen July seventeenth. The
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 2: they were doing an equipment check. They were doing an
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 2: equipment check for us, So they were doing an equipment
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 2: check and if the the helicopters, if the helicopters operated successfully,
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 2: then we would be the next on board. And so
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 2: the air air crew they did the equipment check, and
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 2: as soon as the helicopter lifted off, the propeller came
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 2: undone and it crashed, killing everybody on board but one, uh,
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 2: and there was one survivor. So that was it was
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 2: that just kind of gave me a new perspective on
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 2: life because that like one one step too early or
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 2: too late, and that could have been anybody, right, that
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 2: could have been me or anybody else, right, And they
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 2: did after that, they did a whole equipment check of
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 2: the other remaining helicopters and they found similar problems with
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 2: those helicopters as well. So that gave me a new
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 2: perspective on life. But at the same time, it was, Yeah,
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 2: it was just quite the sobering I guess. I mean,
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 2: I haven't I haven't seen combat. I'm not I'm not Rambo,
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 2: I'm not Sylvesters still on in Rambo. But was I
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 2: think those those two experiences, they they just changed my worldview,
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 2: if you know what I mean, Like it's you learn
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 2: that you're you're if the military taught me anything, it's
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 2: that you're not invincible. Like until I was twenty one,
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 2: I thought I was invincible. Right. I worked out and
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 2: I worked out, I boxed, I did lots of manual labor, right,
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 2: So I was quite proud of my physical prowess. Right.
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 2: But I think being in the militariat it made me
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 2: realize just how how fragile you are, Like how just
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 2: genuinely fragile. You're like an You're like an insect, right,
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 2: Like people lose their lives and become permanently crippled so easily. Right,
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 2: So that was quite sobering. But I think the just yeah,
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 2: like it's it's strange because the story with the two girls,
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 2: Like I was never in any physical danger myself, right,
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 2: I was never in any physical danger myself, But it's
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 2: just this overwhelming sense of guilt that I could not
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 2: help these two and I don't know if And you
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 2: know what's really funny, I've talked to other guys about it,
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 2: the guys who were on like the same mission with
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 2: me and who saw the same girls and stuff. And
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 2: I'm like, do you ever get like have nightmares or
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 2: do you ever feel guilty? And there's just like I
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 2: just don't think about it. Man. So they've they're successful.
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 2: They've just deleted it from their memories. They just I
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 2: just asked them, like do you remember. They're like, nah,
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 2: I don't know what you're talking about. Like, they've just
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 2: deleted it from their memories.
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: Do you think you know? I talk about this a
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: lot with PTSD in do you think that sometimes something
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: that we can experience in service some negative experience, it's
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: going in here and it's it's acting like the piece
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: of the jigsaw that even though it's the wrong piece,
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: we kind of take it on board because yeah, unbeknown
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: to us subconsciously, it's it's reaffirming something in our own story,
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: even if it's accurate. So for example, and again obviously
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: I relate everything to childhood because I believe we're a
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: product of our young, younger, younger experience. And let's just
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: say you had an experience where you weren't valued as
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: a child, or you felt insignificant, or that you let
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: you know, you let people down, and then as an
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: adult you have a horrible experience like you've had, and
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: what it serves to do even though it was nothing,
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: it's not your fault. You did your best for this
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: for this girl, right, But subconsciously it's it's falsely reaffirming
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: that feeling of oh, I'm I'm just kind of letting
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: people down again. Does that make make sense?
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I genuinely agree with you. It's just it's a
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 2: terrible feeling to let people down, right. I Mean, nobody
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 2: likes being let down, but I think the worst thing
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 2: is letting other people down. Yeah.
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a tough one. I think under the eyes
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: of God or spirit consciousness, everything starts today, right at
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: this moment.
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 3: Now.
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: The past is just backstory that we have to learn from,
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: and it's so important, especially for us veterans. You are
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: not judged on what happened in the past because you
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: couldn't know. You can't know stuff that you can't know.
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: And what we can be proud of and judged on
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: is how are we going to act today? Are we
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: going to be a good friend, a good son? Are
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: we going to forgive people for their trespasses? Are we
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: going to embrace life and go forward and try and
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: do the best we can try to be in service
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: to people. And this is how we should judge ourselves,
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: you know, and with the past. And it all starts
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: with one thing, one kernel of truth is you know,
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: there's nothing wrong with you or me. I mean, we're
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: not like it's not like we're born psychopaths or something,
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: you know, it's it's we're good people. We just built
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: we're a product of like you didn't even have to
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: Like I volunteered to join the forces. You you had
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: to join. I mean, that's that's that's kind of you know,
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: harsh in a way. And I only say this because yeah,
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: it's this is going to sound mercenary, and it's not.
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: It's just when I came back from Hong Kong, I
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: was so chronically depressed. I'd left this incredibly exciting life
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: in Hong Kong where I was high all the time. Anyway,
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: and I came back to little old England and it
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: was just miserably.
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: I had no job, I had nothing. I couldn't even
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: get up in the morning. I was so there was
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: just nothing there, you know. And anyway, and what happened
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: was is when I when I learned from it and
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: I healed myself and I and I don't want to
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: use the expression tough because it makes it sound like
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: it's a weakness. And it wasn't a weakness. It was
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: a learning curve I went through right, but it did.
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: It did toughen me up. And then I was able
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: to be in a phone call, for example, with a
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: girl i'd been going out with for seven years and
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: who I loved dearly. She was gorgeous, you know, we
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: we traveled the whole world together, but we just couldn't
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: be together. We we we couldn't argue. We were at
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: the wrong stages and our you know. And when we
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: put that phone down and I knew that's the end
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: of our relationship. I just didn't think about it again.
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: It's fine, believe me, it works. I just went, do
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: you know what, I am not that needy, There is
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: nothing wrong with me. This is just circumstance. Were not
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: right for each other. I hope she goes off and
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: has the best life ever and finds a great guy
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: for her because she deserves it. And do you know what,
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: I hope I go and find a great girl. And
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: absolutely I did. It took another ten or fifteen years
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: of living on my own. I was happy with that, because,
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: you know, if we need to appreciate, we've got the
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: divine love within us, and you don't need someone else
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: to hold on to, like a rock before a waterfall,
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: to say, hey, look, I found someone. I'm a good
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: person out So that was one example where it really were.
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: I literally, with the exception of good memories and smiles,
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: I never thought of her again. I'm not that needy
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: I need another person. Life's brilliant. Let's go and live
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: it right. And I did the same thing in a
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: tragic incident where my friend we went on holiday to
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: Portugal together and he drowned on the very first night
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: of our holiday, and I stood with his dead body
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: at my feet and I kissed him goodbye, and then
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: I went on and I lived my fucking life. It
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: was that simple, you know. And everyone's like, oh, aren't
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: you like this? Shouldn't you know I'm not doing any
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: of that bullshit. I've been depressed. I know what it's like.
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: It doesn't serve any purpose whatsoever. I'm never going there again.
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: He would not want that. He'd be like, oh, e dickhead,
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: get on out there and smash it, mate. You know,
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: go and live your life for me. That's what he
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: would have said. And that's what that's what I did
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: piren you know, and I tell you what it. You know,
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: you don't need to feel guilty about about anything, you know.
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: It's it's just sometimes we can dwell too much on
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: something and then something from our history makes it seem
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: appropriate to us, and before we know it, it's just
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: lowering our energy and our vibration and it takes us
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: to a place that gets darker. And then everything just
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: seems to point out you going yeah, yeah, see, this
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: is just confirmation and you're a great guy, you know.
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: So I hope are you okay with it now? Or
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: does it still bother you?
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 2: Oh? No, no, I'm I've really put the past rest,
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 2: Like I can honestly say, I've put the past to rest.
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 2: It does not bother me as much as it did before.
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, good good. How did you did you have an
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: epiphanal moment with the drinking and everything when one day
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: you just went, nah, he's got to stop.
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 2: Did did you? Did you watch the Sopranos by any chance?
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: I got a rough idea of it, I but I
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: did I Did I miss that one? And I know
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: it was good.
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 2: Okay, there's a there's one scene where one of the characters,
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 2: his name is Christopher Moltisanti. He goes to this bar
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 2: a full of like all so he's a gangster and
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 2: everybody else are gangsters, right, and there they're supposed to
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 2: be these ladies, buds, the the Italian Mafia and all
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 2: that stuff. And then he goes to he goes to
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 2: the bar and then he drinks, and then he looks
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 2: around him and then everybody's smoking cigars and drinking right,
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 2: and he realizes that he's in hell, like in a
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 2: literal hell. Oh and I kind of had that feeling too.
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 2: There was this uh again, like you know, you know
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 2: the dude who's always at the bar like five thirty
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 2: like pm, like before it's even opened.
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that that that was me.
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah exactly, Yeah, that was that was me too. Like
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 2: I've been in that situation. Like it was always like
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 2: right there from like five thirty until four am when
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 2: it closes, right, and every everybody knows your name. Uh.
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 2: And then one day I just I just drank and
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 2: I realized and I looked at everybody at the bar
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 2: around me, and I'm like these people are not your friends.
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 2: They don't genuinely care about you. They they you know,
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 2: like the alcohol, it doesn't. Yeah, it's like like what
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 2: are you? What are you like? What are you like?
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 3: What?
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 2: What the f are you doing with your life?
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 3: Like?
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 2: And uh, that's that's what I realized too, Like it was,
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 2: it was it's it's it's fun to drink. It really is,
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 2: like it's fun to drink and have all these like
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 2: to buy all these guys and girls, you know, shots
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 2: and everybody's like you're the best, right. Uh, you get
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 2: more confidence, You're you're more fun. Right. The bartender is
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 2: nice to you, he's like, oh, you're the man mate,
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 2: Like you've been out of the Marines and that's so cool.
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 2: Let me give you a shot with a welcome back.
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 2: It's it's a good feeling. Okay, I'm not gonna like
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 2: to you. It's a great feeling. It's that that's then
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 2: and then the then and then you're you're you're you're
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 2: ripped to you and there are these like two girls
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 2: talking to you at the same time, right, And that's
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 2: that's a great feeling. I'm not going to deny it.
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 2: But at the end of the day, there there's literally
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 2: nothing that remains, like literally nothing besides maybe a bank account,
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 2: bad liver like tear like a less money and a
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 2: bad liver. So like I had that moment. I just
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 2: I was just in this bar that I always loved,
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 2: that I frequented. I looked at everybody around me, and
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 2: I was just like this is hell, man like, like
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 2: this is hell. So uh again, Like if you if
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 2: you go out drinking and you know you like a
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 2: good guys, that's perfectly fine. It's a good feeling. Like
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 2: I understand why people drink it. It feels good and
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 2: it's it's fun. But also I'm not those people who
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 2: are like, oh, if you have one drink, like you're
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 2: a scumbag, right, you're an alcohol I'm not that person either, Right,
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 2: you do, it's good for you. But as somebody who
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 2: drank NonStop for two years, I can say to you,
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 2: there's it's not worth it to destroy your body like that.
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 2: And all the friends you make through alcohol are not
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 2: your real friends, right, like the drinking bodies like, oh,
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 2: I look at these guys you know, like they're not
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 2: your friends, right, And your family cares about you. They
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 2: don't care about you. Your family cares about you, not them. Yeah.
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, My dad was in My dad was in his
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: usual bar one night, and I saw it over the years,
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: you know, I used to if I was passing through
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: his village, I'd go and stop and have a beer
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: with him. And I saw the people that were always
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: at the bar, and for the most part it you know,
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: it wasn't good. I'm not saying it was awful, but
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: you had to see it for what it was. And
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: one night, one night, one of the guys at the
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: bar was missing, and he lived in a flat, like
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: an apartment above the bar because they had it was
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 1: a it was actually called a hotel, and so they
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: did these cheap rooms up there, and a lot of
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: kind of transient people, you know, misfit kinds, would would
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: get that cheap room kind of thing. And the barman
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: was a chap called Pete. He was a very nice guy.
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: We we've always got on really well, me me and
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: me and Pete. And someone at the bar said, so,
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 1: where's where's John tonight? And everybody looked and they went, oh,
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: I don't know, he hasn't come down yet. And then
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: they're drinking on into the evening and suddenly bang, they
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: hear this shot bring out, and my dad just turned
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: to the barman and said, I think you need to
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: go up and take a look, and it's not going
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: to be nice. And so Pete went up and let him.
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: He had the key because he was the landlord. Obviously,
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: he let himself into this guy's apartment, and you know,
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: he's lying there with a shotgun next to him, and
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: it's a crazy life. A lot of people come to
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: the bar, don't they because they're lonely, and they they haven't,
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: you know, and for all these different I mean, some
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: people just go to a bar. They just want to beer.
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: That's fine. Some people just enjoy it. It's kind of good.
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: But I remember the last time I really went to
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: that kind of bar. I was with my mate and
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: he just loved going to this pub, and you could
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: see he just so made a home for himself there,
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: even though the landlord was an absolute idiot. He wasn't
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: a nice person at all. And I just stood there
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: and this girl was just kind of shouting at me
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: because I I didn't like I would never wore the
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: face mask or any of that stuff. That's not not
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: my thing, you know. And I went home. I just
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: felt I felt like I'd been through a really bad experience. Yeah,
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: and I just thought about my friend, thought why why
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 1: can't you see what? But hey, hey, ho, you know
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 1: not it's not at I'm not lecturing anyone here. I'm
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: just saying it's it's you do have to reappraise your
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: alcohol intake as you get older. Definitely, absolutely, you know,
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: even just a little bit, and that the devil. It's
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: like opening your back door a bit and the devil's
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: just coming in. And they call it spirits because you're
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: letting in the dark spirits, you know. And yeah, I
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: tell you what, Pyn, this has been an absolutely wonderful chat. Brother,
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: I've really enjoyed it. It's been quite you know. I
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: appreciate you being so honest and stuff that's been very
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: painful to you. It's fascinating to hear about the South
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: Korean military. I'm very grateful that I've had the chance
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: to come to your country. That was quite funny. Actually,
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: I was in Japan and I had around the world ticket.
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: I was going from Japan to Singapore, and like an
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: idiot that only I can be, I rocked up at
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 1: the Narita Airport in Tokyo, and check my ticket. I
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: was a day early and really yeah, and do you
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: know that train from the city center to the airport,
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: it's it's even though it's a fast train, it's still
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: like an hour or two hours or something. So it
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: wasn't worth me going back. I just would have killed
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: off half the day. So I went up to the
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: ticket sales and said, have you know, have you got
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 1: any Where's your next flight going? And they said, oh,
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: the next flight's going to Korea to seld. I was like, okay,
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: get get me on it. And they changed my around
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: the World ticket to give me three days in Seoul,
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: and I said how much? They said, oh, sir, you've
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: got to pay an extra, you know, because we're actually changed.
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: It was some thing that I had to pay extra,
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 1: even though I had around the World ticket, and they
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: said it was five hundred pounds. Now this this was
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: twenty odd years ago, so that's probably that would be
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: about two thousand pounds now right.
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 1: I just got out my credit card and I said
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: pay it. You know, you get one life and if
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: I can go to Koreer I've never been there. I
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 1: was so excited already, and there it was. I rocked
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: up in Soul at two o'clock in the morning and
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: walking through the backstreets with my backpack, and I think
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: I grabbed a beer somewhere and some street food and
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: went and found my hotel.
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 2: I got up.
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: I had to get up early the next day, six o'clock,
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: so I got into bed at half past three and
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: I was up for six. And I got on the
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: tour bus to the d Military zone and they said,
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: who wants to go to North Korea? I said, I
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: want to go to North And what can I say?
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: You know, I had such a wonderful time in your country,
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 1: so thank you, thank you very much. And I got
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: introduced to the delight of kimchi, which I've still got
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: in the fridge now and you can't see it. Let
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 1: me show you this. Here are one of my special
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: one of my special possessions. They're my Korean chopsticks. They've
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: even got your you know, your the ying and the
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: yang on them. I think I I think I stole
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 1: them on the aeroplane. To be honest. You know, hey, ho,
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: what great, what a great life? This is so absolutely pyne.
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: Just stay on the zoom call so I can say
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 1: goodbye properly. But for the purposes of the recording, I'm
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: just going to play us out massive, massive, thank you brother.
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: Please let's keep in touch. If you ever come this
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: way to England, please please give me a shout and
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: it would be great, great to hook up. Where are
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 1: you in the States? Are you allowed to say?
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 2: Oh, no, I'm in South Korea right now, I'm in
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 2: South Korea, but I work remotely.
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: Okay, Right, I've got you. Okay, So if I'm ever
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 1: coming back you away, I'm going to be sure to.
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 2: Look you up, absolutely, so please do.
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: And that just leads me to say, to our friends
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: at home, massive, thank you for joining us. If you
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: could like and subscribe, that would be absolutely wonderful. If
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: you can support the channel by joining our Legends club
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: on either YouTube, YouTube membership, Patreon locals, or buy me
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: a coffee for as little as one ninety nine with
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: loads of benefits like VIP tickets to my events. You're
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: naming the podcast credits monthly, a monthly zoom chat where
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 1: we put the worlds to write and do a bit
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: of live coaching and shout outs in my video. That
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: would be awesome. That just leads me to say to
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: Pyrun massive, Thank you again and much love everybody, go steady.
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 2: Thank you Chris, It's been an absolute honor to be
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 2: on this podcast. Thank you so much for your time
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 2: and effort.
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you, Thank you.
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 3: Friends.
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to the Bought the T Shirt Podcast.
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 3: Please like, subscribe, and share, and don't get to follow
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 3: me so media use the name Christhroll Instagram, Christ Through
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 3: thank you.
• 1:35:17
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• 1:35:20
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• 1:35:21
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• 1:35:22
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• 1:35:25
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• 1:35:27
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