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The American Soldiers Who Defected to North Korea and Became Movie Stars · Ridiculous History

0:23
Speaker 1: Oh Man, oh Man, oh Man. It's our second episode
0:27
Speaker 1: of nineteen and we're off to a great start because
0:31
Speaker 1: today we get to talk about one of my favorite places,
0:34
Speaker 1: one of the places I find most fascinating in the world,
0:37
Speaker 1: the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Welcome to Ridiculous History.
0:40
Speaker 1: My name is Ben, My name is no and Ben,
0:42
Speaker 1: you got me a pretty dope hat from there. It's true.
0:46
Speaker 1: It's true. Uh, it's true. But I hope that I
0:50
Speaker 1: don't make our super producer Casey Pegram envious. It's just
0:55
Speaker 1: I saw the hat and thought of you, and it
0:57
Speaker 1: was like, it's not special if I get everybody the
0:59
Speaker 1: same Casey, only where's that one happen? Says Movies. It's true,
1:03
Speaker 1: says Casey on the case. Yes, Uh, I did go
1:10
Speaker 1: to I think we mentioned this on the show previously.
1:13
Speaker 1: In August of eighteen, I spent some time in Korea.
1:18
Speaker 1: It was amazing. It was my first time. There's a
1:21
Speaker 1: lot of history there, and I was able to visit
1:24
Speaker 1: the d m Z. This is not an episode about
1:28
Speaker 1: the d m Z. This is more I think about
1:31
Speaker 1: the strange things that can happen when a country is
1:35
Speaker 1: under tyrannical authoritarian rule and is largely isolated from the
1:41
Speaker 1: rest of the world. We've talked about this before in
1:44
Speaker 1: various podcasts. There are some universal human desires, you know
1:49
Speaker 1: what I mean. People love to be entertained, People love
1:52
Speaker 1: to have delicious food, people love to feel influential in
1:56
Speaker 1: their circle and stuff. Um. But when it comes to
2:00
Speaker 1: certain industries, it's very difficult for every single country to
2:05
Speaker 1: make its own domestic version of that industry. Like it's
2:08
Speaker 1: really difficult to start a car industry. That's why there's
2:12
Speaker 1: there's a relatively small number of car companies that make
2:15
Speaker 1: cars for the rest of the world. It's also pretty difficult,
2:19
Speaker 1: where it was for some time, to start a film industry,
2:23
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. So today's story touches on
2:29
Speaker 1: so many things that touches on the film industry. It
2:32
Speaker 1: takes place in North Korea, It touches on the US military.
2:37
Speaker 1: It touches on the idea of defecting to another country,
2:41
Speaker 1: which I think is fascinating. Have you ever thought of defecting?
2:44
Speaker 1: Where you one of those people who said sometime over
2:47
Speaker 1: the past few years, I'm going to go to Canada.
2:49
Speaker 1: Is it called defecting? That would just be I think
2:53
Speaker 1: that would just be being a refugee because too defect,
2:58
Speaker 1: at least in the way we're talking, you would have
3:00
Speaker 1: to be an active military remember. Yeah, and here's a
3:03
Speaker 1: question too. Don't you have to kind of have like
3:05
Speaker 1: a real good reason to be a refugee or to
3:08
Speaker 1: seek asylum or something like that, right, Yeah, that your
3:11
Speaker 1: life is in danger for maybe your religious beliefs, or
3:16
Speaker 1: maybe because of your sexual orientation, stuff like that, that
3:20
Speaker 1: you're suffering under some kind of totalitarian regime, or if
3:23
Speaker 1: you are forced to return to the country, you will
3:26
Speaker 1: be murdered. Yeah. And I mean I'm not lowbeit unto
3:30
Speaker 1: us to get political and ridiculous history, but starting to
3:34
Speaker 1: feel like that that could be the case for our
3:37
Speaker 1: country one of these days. So in the minds of
3:42
Speaker 1: most people outside of the DPRK or North Korea, it's
3:47
Speaker 1: it's an enigmatic country. We for a long time didn't
3:51
Speaker 1: know a ton about what happened there. We just knew
3:55
Speaker 1: that it was ruled by the Kim family, right, and
3:58
Speaker 1: that the Kim family and their inner circle of military
4:02
Speaker 1: cadre ran the entire country, literally ran it, and people
4:06
Speaker 1: people had to um publicly adhere to a very rigid ideology, right,
4:13
Speaker 1: one that elevated members of the Kim family to the
4:17
Speaker 1: status of deities or demi gods. It seems like a
4:21
Speaker 1: weird place to move to. I mean, anybody who's ever
4:24
Speaker 1: moved in their lives, any of us who have maybe
4:27
Speaker 1: relocated to a different town or a different state or
4:29
Speaker 1: a different country, you can realize how disorienting that is.
4:32
Speaker 1: So imagine if you are US Army Sergeant Charles Robert Jenkins.
4:39
Speaker 1: You don't speak Korean, right, you don't particularly enjoy being
4:43
Speaker 1: in the military, but you do love drinking. You like
4:48
Speaker 1: knocking back a couple of cold ones with your buds. Yeah,
4:52
Speaker 1: buds with buds, Buds with buds. We'll put approximately uh
4:56
Speaker 1: in this case. Ten On January four, nineteen six ste five,
5:01
Speaker 1: Sergeant Jenkins deserted his infantry company at the edge of
5:05
Speaker 1: the demilitarized zone, walked alone across a minefield, did not
5:10
Speaker 1: blow up, and defected to North Korea. Yeah. Man, The
5:14
Speaker 1: part that really got me there among the multiple bonkers
5:18
Speaker 1: layers of the story is walked drunkenly across a mine field. Yea,
5:23
Speaker 1: So after ten beers, walked is probably a charitable description,
5:27
Speaker 1: which means he wasn't even meaning careful. He did like
5:29
Speaker 1: drunk boxing parkour across the mine field. Maybe it's one
5:33
Speaker 1: of those things, sort of like in the in Um
5:36
Speaker 1: Inspector Gadget cartoons where he just kind of bumbles his
5:39
Speaker 1: way and and doesn't get killed by all these various
5:43
Speaker 1: pitfalls that could kill him, but by sheer luck he
5:47
Speaker 1: happens to dodge every single one of them, and said
5:49
Speaker 1: some and some kind of physical comedy pratt fall screwball
5:53
Speaker 1: kind of way are you picturing this? Yeah? Oh exactly,
5:55
Speaker 1: whoa but the do foot bears and I missed the mine.
5:59
Speaker 1: You know, people are still scouting four active minds in
6:02
Speaker 1: the DMZ today. You were saying that, right, Yeah, so uh.
6:06
Speaker 1: The fact that he made it is a stroke of
6:09
Speaker 1: brilliant luck. What happens though, when he does finally get
6:14
Speaker 1: into North Korea? Do they welcome in with open arms?
6:18
Speaker 1: Well not exactly. Yeah, they This is just a theme
6:22
Speaker 1: that you keep you see pop up because we're gonna
6:23
Speaker 1: talk about a handful of defectors. There weren't a lot,
6:26
Speaker 1: but there were a few, and they all had they
6:28
Speaker 1: all shared a similar kind of result. They were forced
6:31
Speaker 1: to hold up in some pretty inhospitable housing and spend
6:39
Speaker 1: copious amounts of time studying the writings or the principles
6:44
Speaker 1: of Kim Il sung, who is the patriarch of this
6:48
Speaker 1: uh Korean dynasty, this North Korean dynasty. Yeah, the first
6:51
Speaker 1: Supreme Leader of North Korea from its establishment in until
6:56
Speaker 1: he died in nineteen nine four, and it's also known
7:01
Speaker 1: as the Great Leader. He was declared the eternal President
7:07
Speaker 1: of the Republic in so technically he's still holds a
7:12
Speaker 1: governmental position after his death. So Jenkins is forced to
7:18
Speaker 1: forced to do homework, forced to study Juche philosophy for
7:24
Speaker 1: eleven hours every day. Tell me a little bit about
7:26
Speaker 1: Juche philosophy, ben Cha. It's interesting because it's it's somewhat controversial.
7:33
Speaker 1: It's considered in the DPRK Kimmel songs, his his ideology
7:39
Speaker 1: revolutionary theory that was originally thought to be a variety
7:44
Speaker 1: of like Marxist uh Leninists thought, while it incorporated these
7:50
Speaker 1: different ideas that were uniquely Korean in character, what eventually
7:55
Speaker 1: happened is that the North Korean government adopted this concept
7:58
Speaker 1: of Juche into a set principles to justify policy decisions
8:02
Speaker 1: from the nineteen fifties to today. And it's got an
8:06
Speaker 1: emphasis on agricultural independence, lack of international dependencies, you know
8:12
Speaker 1: what I mean. Uh. This it's controversial, however, because this
8:18
Speaker 1: Korean style socialism, the thing that it is on paper
8:22
Speaker 1: rarely makes it to what happens on the ground, you
8:25
Speaker 1: know what I mean. It's better in theory than it
8:27
Speaker 1: is in practice. Absolutely so. A lot of the stuff,
8:31
Speaker 1: and this might just be an issue of translation, a
8:34
Speaker 1: lot of the stuff in English is very very dry
8:37
Speaker 1: and very process oriented. It's it's like a dusty philosophical
8:41
Speaker 1: tone and somewhat redundant. And Jenkins has to read this
8:47
Speaker 1: for almost twelve hours every day until he can recite
8:50
Speaker 1: the primary principles of juche in Korean. And then he
8:56
Speaker 1: wasn't even offered a choice. At this point, he was
8:59
Speaker 1: forced to become a North Korean citizen uh and was
9:02
Speaker 1: put to work as an English translator and teacher. Um.
9:06
Speaker 1: And he also, you're gonna hear about this part a
9:08
Speaker 1: little later, along with some of these other folks, was
9:11
Speaker 1: an actor. But every move he made, as the police
9:16
Speaker 1: would say, every movie you make, every step you take,
9:19
Speaker 1: Supreme Leader is watching you. I'm paraphrasing here a little bit.
9:23
Speaker 1: I thought that was well done the words of Sting.
9:26
Speaker 1: He was also forced to marry a Japanese citizen who
9:29
Speaker 1: had been kidnapped by North Korea. Her name was Hitomi Soga.
9:32
Speaker 1: She was kidnapped in nineteen seventy eight to be a
9:37
Speaker 1: slave teacher of Japanese language and customs for North Korean spies.
9:43
Speaker 1: The strange thing about this is that Jenkins, as as
9:48
Speaker 1: you mentioned, old Jenkins, became an actor, but he became
9:51
Speaker 1: an actor in propaganda films. So it turns out that
9:59
Speaker 1: Jenkins found his strange career and propaganda films because the ruler,
10:06
Speaker 1: the son of Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong il, it
10:10
Speaker 1: was a huge film buff, like huge, casey, more of
10:14
Speaker 1: a film buff than any of our mutual friends. Yeah.
10:17
Speaker 1: He has apparently like just a huge collection of physical media,
10:21
Speaker 1: and I read that it was somewhere in the neighborhood
10:23
Speaker 1: of twenty thousand pieces, and most of them are bootleg
10:28
Speaker 1: because they did not have a trade relationship with the
10:30
Speaker 1: United States, so they would have had to be smuggled
10:33
Speaker 1: or some kind of weird bootleg versions exactly. Yeah, And
10:38
Speaker 1: it's strange because North Korea actually does have a thriving
10:41
Speaker 1: animation in district now and it's pretty solid stuff. But
10:45
Speaker 1: back then, they wanted to make their own uniquely North
10:49
Speaker 1: Korean feature films. And one of the first things they
10:53
Speaker 1: did when they started making feature films is they started
10:58
Speaker 1: making war stories, inspirational nationalistic narratives, propaganda, right propaganda. And
11:05
Speaker 1: for that they needed convincing enemies. They needed someone to
11:10
Speaker 1: be depicted as agents of chaos from the American side.
11:14
Speaker 1: And they said, oh, look, we've got this guy. We've
11:17
Speaker 1: got uh, got this this Sergeant Jenkins here. Uh. And
11:22
Speaker 1: then they also realized that they had a couple of
11:26
Speaker 1: other defectors. Right, we have a guy by the name
11:29
Speaker 1: of Larry Absher who crossed the d m Z on
11:32
Speaker 1: May at nineteen years old. Then we have Private James
11:38
Speaker 1: Joseph Dresnock who followed abs Shear's lead, I think it
11:41
Speaker 1: was three months later. And who else do we have them?
11:44
Speaker 1: Then we also have Joseph White who slipped into North
11:49
Speaker 1: Korea in ninety two, and we have Jerry Parrish who
11:54
Speaker 1: left for North Korea in nineteen sixty three. These these
12:00
Speaker 1: men gave different explanations for their motivation. Right, there were
12:04
Speaker 1: some who said they were sold on the communist lifestyle,
12:08
Speaker 1: some just wanted to get away from their problems in
12:09
Speaker 1: the West, and sub just didn't know what they were doing,
12:14
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. And it's not a situation
12:16
Speaker 1: you could undo easily. Yeah, Jerry Parrish didn't really give
12:19
Speaker 1: too many details other than to say that if he
12:21
Speaker 1: ever returned home, his father in law would kill him.
12:25
Speaker 1: So I guess a reasonable solution to that is to,
12:29
Speaker 1: you know, defect from your country. Right. He seemed like
12:33
Speaker 1: he had a legitimate fear of his life. We wanted
12:35
Speaker 1: to go off the grid. Goes back to the u
12:37
Speaker 1: N idea of pleading asylum or refugee style. But this
12:41
Speaker 1: is not the same as that, right, I mean, this
12:42
Speaker 1: is very much like a I am abandoning my country,
12:46
Speaker 1: I am leaving my post, which would you know result
12:49
Speaker 1: in like court martial or like treason charges. I would,
12:52
Speaker 1: I would think, wouldn't you, Yeah, yeah it would. And
12:56
Speaker 1: this will bring us back to Charles Jenkins in a
12:59
Speaker 1: little bit. It But we've got to tell you, uh,
13:03
Speaker 1: these guys when they were cast in these propaganda films,
13:06
Speaker 1: who were playing evil Americans. And one thing that was
13:09
Speaker 1: amazing about this is over time, after several films, they
13:14
Speaker 1: became local celebrities for North Korea because it's a very
13:17
Speaker 1: insular country. So I mean, they didn't really have that
13:20
Speaker 1: much access to any to anything other than what was
13:23
Speaker 1: produced by the government. So they would have been absolutely
13:29
Speaker 1: from the center, especially considering that they were like the
13:31
Speaker 1: only Americans around. Yea, you know, they would have made
13:36
Speaker 1: an impression. Yeah. Absolutely. And we also have to say,
13:39
Speaker 1: without impinging their character too much, none of these guys
13:44
Speaker 1: who defected from the U. S. Army were paragons of
13:47
Speaker 1: military virtue, you know what I mean. There was one guy,
13:50
Speaker 1: ab Shure that we mentioned who was notorious for being
13:53
Speaker 1: a pothead. He got caught multiple times getting high pads.
13:59
Speaker 1: I mean, you don't do it willie nilly while you're
14:01
Speaker 1: on your post, while you're at your job, you know,
14:04
Speaker 1: unless your job is like you work for High Times
14:06
Speaker 1: or something that's still around or Vice magazine. It's true,
14:11
Speaker 1: it is true. So these guys are quickly involved in
14:16
Speaker 1: the most surreal sort of life. They're not just movie stars, right,
14:20
Speaker 1: They're also icons that can be used to antagonize other
14:26
Speaker 1: members of the US military or South Korean military. They
14:30
Speaker 1: were abs sheer and Dresnock, and then later Parrish and
14:34
Speaker 1: Jenkins were featured in propaganda magazines. They put out a
14:38
Speaker 1: magazine called Fortune's Favorites that depicted the American smiling ear
14:42
Speaker 1: to ear, marveling at the joyous benefits of life of
14:45
Speaker 1: the d p r K. And they had things. They
14:48
Speaker 1: had different segments or columns. One was called Letters from
14:51
Speaker 1: Abs Shear and Dresnick, titled to the American Soldiers South
14:55
Speaker 1: of the d m Z. And we've got a quick
14:58
Speaker 1: quotation here, do you, old fellow friends, enjoying warm welcome
15:03
Speaker 1: from the North Korean people? I put off the disgusting
15:06
Speaker 1: g I uniform and visited yong Yang and other cities
15:10
Speaker 1: and villages to tell the truth. The people in North
15:14
Speaker 1: Korea are enjoying freedom and happiness inaccessible to the Wook
15:18
Speaker 1: and people of the United States. Now, please don't be
15:22
Speaker 1: a victim for the Wall Street, but for your withdrawal
15:26
Speaker 1: from South Korea. M Now, I mean it sure sounds
15:30
Speaker 1: like I think we mentioned this a little bit, But
15:32
Speaker 1: all of these gentlemen experienced a very similar degree of indoctrination,
15:37
Speaker 1: and they were forced to like they weren't fed properly,
15:41
Speaker 1: they were basically just forced to memorize this these core principles,
15:45
Speaker 1: um and I don't know enough enough time isolated and alone.
15:49
Speaker 1: And I think weren't some of them forced to live
15:51
Speaker 1: together and kind of pitted against each other in some
15:54
Speaker 1: kind of weird hunger games he kind of scenario. Yeah, Abs,
15:57
Speaker 1: Sheer and Parish had to live together. Jane Kins and
16:00
Speaker 1: Dresnock also had to share a home while they were
16:03
Speaker 1: teaching English and the military academy. And this that excerpt,
16:08
Speaker 1: that excerpt I just read, is clearly not written by
16:11
Speaker 1: these guys. It's not written by Dressing, thank you. That's
16:16
Speaker 1: because he did have an accent. He was, he's still,
16:19
Speaker 1: I think, up to until his death, had a trace
16:22
Speaker 1: of his rural North Carolinian accent. But what we see
16:26
Speaker 1: when we look at the way North Korea treated these
16:29
Speaker 1: defectors is um very similar to what we see when
16:33
Speaker 1: people are indoctrinated in cults. One of the big things
16:36
Speaker 1: that every cult does is to bombard people with information.
16:41
Speaker 1: It can be senseless, it can have its own internal logic.
16:44
Speaker 1: The point is to remove the possibility of asking questions,
16:49
Speaker 1: just make people memorize and recite things, and then it's
16:53
Speaker 1: very clever about putting them in homes and kind of
16:55
Speaker 1: pitting them against each other. Is it makes it much
16:58
Speaker 1: more likely for them to ex scept they're forced marriages,
17:01
Speaker 1: because when they were forced to marry other kidnapped people,
17:05
Speaker 1: often from Japan or something, it was entirely assumed by
17:10
Speaker 1: the government that these couples would reproduce, and then they
17:14
Speaker 1: could use the quote unquote is not a phrase we're using.
17:18
Speaker 1: They could use the quote unquote ethnically ambiguous children as spies.
17:25
Speaker 1: They can blend in you know what I mean, absolutely
17:27
Speaker 1: been And I think it's interesting that you talk about
17:29
Speaker 1: the kidnapping aspect of this, because this is a really
17:32
Speaker 1: interesting gray area to me, kind of where it's like
17:34
Speaker 1: they are submitting themselves to this. They made the choice,
17:37
Speaker 1: either drunkenly or with some ideological kind of bent to
17:42
Speaker 1: cross that DMZ into this other country and you know,
17:45
Speaker 1: toss off their h the trappings of being an American.
17:49
Speaker 1: But they also probably didn't fully know what they were
17:51
Speaker 1: signing up for, and then they were basically thrown into
17:54
Speaker 1: this indoctrination factory, you know, uh, and forced to live
17:58
Speaker 1: in sub human condition shens and turned into something that
18:02
Speaker 1: they were not when they made that choice. So you
18:05
Speaker 1: know what I mean, it's like sort of like a
18:06
Speaker 1: weird it's almost like a Stockholm syndrome kind of thing,
18:09
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Yeah, absolutely, and some like
18:13
Speaker 1: in the case of James Dresnock, he died happily in
18:16
Speaker 1: North Korea in twenty sixteen. He was unrepentant. He professed
18:21
Speaker 1: support for communism. He was the last living American defector
18:25
Speaker 1: in North Korea. He's also got the nickname Comrade Joe
18:29
Speaker 1: in DPRK because again he's a celebrity who was featured
18:32
Speaker 1: in a film called Crossing the Line at South Korea's
18:35
Speaker 1: Poussan International Film Festival, and he says he feels at
18:39
Speaker 1: home in the film. He never regretted going to Korea.
18:42
Speaker 1: He seems very sincere about it. He says his life
18:46
Speaker 1: is better because he defected, and by North Korean standards,
18:51
Speaker 1: his his life was pretty good. But you can tell
18:54
Speaker 1: the lack of medical and dental care took a toll
18:57
Speaker 1: on him, like his front teeth or missy is that's
19:00
Speaker 1: something that he uh acquired from North Korea, like from
19:05
Speaker 1: violence fallout. He also had a heavy, heavy drinking and
19:11
Speaker 1: smoking habits, so let's look at told on him. We'll
19:15
Speaker 1: get this ben um. That perspective is is one side
19:18
Speaker 1: of the coin. Our boy Charles Robert Jenkins, who was
19:21
Speaker 1: kind of the sort of spearheaded this whole thing. Um,
19:24
Speaker 1: you could say, he actually escaped or was able to
19:28
Speaker 1: leave in two thousand four quite recently to visit his mother.
19:33
Speaker 1: That's right. And he had some slightly less sympathetic words
19:39
Speaker 1: or kind words to characterize the experience of these four men.
19:42
Speaker 1: If I, if I may quote, we were all young,
19:46
Speaker 1: dumb soldiers from poor backgrounds. I had a pretty good
19:49
Speaker 1: military record, while the other three were pretty much total
19:53
Speaker 1: ups as soldiers. The three of them, also, like me,
19:56
Speaker 1: walked across the d m Z without really thinking about
19:59
Speaker 1: the huge consequences of what they were doing and without
20:02
Speaker 1: understanding what North Korea was really like. They were trapped
20:05
Speaker 1: there in North Korea. All of them quickly grew to
20:08
Speaker 1: hate the country and would have left in a second
20:11
Speaker 1: if they could have what a sorry, asked little foursome.
20:14
Speaker 1: We were so according to Jenkins, any expression to the
20:19
Speaker 1: contrary from any of these guys who he was intimately
20:22
Speaker 1: familiar with, was either forced or a product of some
20:26
Speaker 1: kind of brainwashing. Yeah, and it makes sense. Also, North
20:32
Speaker 1: Korea is a very homogeneous, racist environment. The I believe
20:37
Speaker 1: it was Jenkins who says that he had only once
20:42
Speaker 1: been in the same room with the Great Leader Kim
20:44
Speaker 1: Il sung, and Kim snorted disapproval at jenkins Korean clothing
20:49
Speaker 1: and ordered him and all other Westerners to never again
20:52
Speaker 1: sully Korean clothing. So he wore a suit and tie afterwards.
20:55
Speaker 1: It's great detail on that story. From the Atlantic. There's
20:59
Speaker 1: an order goal from called the U. S. Soldier who
21:02
Speaker 1: Defected to North Korea by Graham Wood. Highly recommend checking
21:06
Speaker 1: that out. But as you said, Noel Jenkins is a
21:11
Speaker 1: little bit different because after he spent nearly forty years
21:15
Speaker 1: in North Korea, he got out. When he left North
21:18
Speaker 1: Korea in two thousand four, he was sixty four years old.
21:21
Speaker 1: The army threw him in the stockade for twenty four days,
21:24
Speaker 1: he got a dishonorable discharge, and then eventually he and
21:29
Speaker 1: his wife moved to Japan, where he sold crackers. Yep,
21:38
Speaker 1: full circle. Really, It's it's weird though, because he's still
21:42
Speaker 1: sort of a an exotic icon right first in North Korea,
21:47
Speaker 1: now in Japan apparently, and did you hear this in
21:51
Speaker 1: Japanese culture? Uh? He and had told me Soga's story
21:56
Speaker 1: about how they met and how they married and you know,
21:59
Speaker 1: became family is considered one of the great modern romances. Yeah,
22:04
Speaker 1: I want to see you know that this is such
22:06
Speaker 1: a bonker story. Wouldn't this make a fun like kind
22:10
Speaker 1: of Screwball Cohen brother z you're going to say kind
22:14
Speaker 1: of film? Yeah, because like, these two people find love
22:18
Speaker 1: under these really weird esque big brother Orwellian conditions and
22:23
Speaker 1: then they stick together and they eventually when their freedom. Apparently,
22:28
Speaker 1: when people walk into the shop, they start whispering to
22:31
Speaker 1: each other and they stare at Jenkins until he caves
22:34
Speaker 1: and says, all right, come on, you can take a
22:36
Speaker 1: picture with me. Photo is one of the only words
22:39
Speaker 1: he knows in Japanese. Interesting. There's another soldier who was
22:48
Speaker 1: thought to have possibly defected to North Korea, a guy
22:52
Speaker 1: named Roy Chung. His story is pretty controversial. He's born
22:55
Speaker 1: in South Korea's chung Ru and he moved to the
22:58
Speaker 1: US with his parents and seven the three he joined
23:01
Speaker 1: the army and when he needed college money, and here's
23:05
Speaker 1: the strange thing, he was nowhere near Korea when he disappeared.
23:10
Speaker 1: In nine nine, he vanished from his unit in Germany,
23:13
Speaker 1: and three months later the North Korean State Radio announced
23:17
Speaker 1: that he had defected. The Pentagon and State departments say
23:20
Speaker 1: that's probably true, but his parents are still convinced he
23:23
Speaker 1: was kidnapped. Wow, no one knows what happened to him,
23:26
Speaker 1: He just disappeared. Well, Ben, this has been a pretty
23:30
Speaker 1: incredible ride. Um. I think we have some pretty neat
23:34
Speaker 1: other kind of side stories about some other interesting film
23:39
Speaker 1: related um North Korean tales that we could probably wrap
23:44
Speaker 1: with if you wanted to. I don't know that there's
23:46
Speaker 1: much more to say about these particular defectors, well, nothing
23:50
Speaker 1: that's been made public yet, right. The last effector that
23:55
Speaker 1: you will hear brought up in these sorts of list
23:57
Speaker 1: is a guy named Joseph White, who was considered the
23:59
Speaker 1: city and possibly final US soldier to defect to the DPRK.
24:05
Speaker 1: He came aboard on August nineteen eighty two. He shot
24:10
Speaker 1: a lock off a gate at the Korean DMZ and
24:12
Speaker 1: started walking through the mine fields. His mom didn't believe
24:15
Speaker 1: it first off. She said he loved this country, he
24:18
Speaker 1: loved that uniform and everything about it. He was nothing
24:20
Speaker 1: but a Gung Ho army and Gung Ho Reagan guy.
24:23
Speaker 1: But back at his barracks, investigators found all these pro
24:25
Speaker 1: North Korean leaflets and propaganda. His buddies were dumbfounded, and
24:30
Speaker 1: no one heard of him until nineteen eighties six, when
24:35
Speaker 1: White's parents got a letter from someone in North Korea
24:37
Speaker 1: who said that they were friends with the soldier and
24:40
Speaker 1: that he had drowned in a river while enjoying leisure
24:43
Speaker 1: time outing. So don't know what happened to him. We
24:47
Speaker 1: do know that North Korea produced a number of propaganda films,
24:52
Speaker 1: not just unsung heroes, not just that nineteen seventy eight banger.
24:56
Speaker 1: We have a little bit of a list. What what
24:57
Speaker 1: really stuck out to you on this on this is
25:00
Speaker 1: the propaganda films? Well maybe maybe this isn't necessarily a
25:03
Speaker 1: propaganda film, And I think this is a fantastic story.
25:06
Speaker 1: Um that apparently Kim Jong eel Um had some directors,
25:11
Speaker 1: very popular North Korean film directors who escaped to Hong Kong,
25:16
Speaker 1: um kidnapped and brought back to North Korea and forced
25:21
Speaker 1: to make a rip off of Godzilla pool Gus sary Um,
25:27
Speaker 1: And the plot of this is incomprehensible to me. There
25:30
Speaker 1: must be some cultural thing that I'm missing here, But
25:32
Speaker 1: apparently the story it's the story of a of a
25:34
Speaker 1: small doll made of rice that becomes a mythical creature
25:39
Speaker 1: um and helps the peasants, the proletariat overthrow a monarchy
25:44
Speaker 1: um that is corrupting their land. So that's interesting that
25:49
Speaker 1: they would cast it from the perspective of the proletariat,
25:53
Speaker 1: right like the peasants doing an uprising kind of right
25:56
Speaker 1: like that? How does that? How does that serve the regime?
26:00
Speaker 1: You know, that's a that's a complex question. It's fair,
26:03
Speaker 1: that's a complex question. It's a matter of perspective and zeitgeist,
26:06
Speaker 1: isn't it. But you're right. Kim Jong Il was so
26:10
Speaker 1: interested in film that he you know, do we mention
26:14
Speaker 1: his book on the Art of the Cinema, So he
26:18
Speaker 1: describes his tactics of using movies as educational tools to
26:22
Speaker 1: spread his ideals to the nation, sort of the way
26:24
Speaker 1: Saddam Hussein wrote those uh historical fiction romance novels, which
26:31
Speaker 1: is also really weird. And I believe if you if
26:34
Speaker 1: you want to get a little bit deeper dive into that,
26:36
Speaker 1: you can check out our pal Robert Evans show Behind
26:38
Speaker 1: the Bastards, where he does an episodes specifically on those
26:41
Speaker 1: romance novels of Saddam Hussein. I did. Yeah, that's true,
26:45
Speaker 1: and we will probably have Robert on the show again
26:47
Speaker 1: sometime soon. He would love that, so Kim Jong ills
26:51
Speaker 1: would be film industry was entirely fueled by the kidnapping
26:56
Speaker 1: of directors, actors, other artists for UM South Korea from
27:01
Speaker 1: Japan in these various places. It seems like he didn't
27:05
Speaker 1: understand that it was wrong to kidnap people. He just
27:08
Speaker 1: thought that was the way you hired people. Yeah, exactly.
27:12
Speaker 1: So there's there's also souls protests, there's eternal comrades, which
27:19
Speaker 1: is uh, it's based on this UM. This situation in
27:25
Speaker 1: a terrorist group tried to kill Kim Il Sung. A
27:28
Speaker 1: Soviet officer named Yakov Nivechenko saw the grenade and sacrificed
27:32
Speaker 1: himself by throwing his body on top of it, and
27:35
Speaker 1: it saved Kim Jong Il's life. Uh. And then this guy,
27:40
Speaker 1: the Russian Nevchenko, had a large book strapped to the
27:44
Speaker 1: front of his chest as a kind of body armor.
27:47
Speaker 1: It saved his life too, and then that made him
27:51
Speaker 1: I think the first Russian to receive the title of
27:53
Speaker 1: North Korean national hero and eternal comrades re enacts the
27:58
Speaker 1: events of that day. Genius. Is it well yeah, in
28:02
Speaker 1: terms of it being just wild, yeah, And it's weird
28:06
Speaker 1: because you can't see You can see clips of these
28:09
Speaker 1: on YouTube and if you want to watch them, but
28:11
Speaker 1: it's very difficult to find the full copy of these
28:16
Speaker 1: in you know, entirely English forms, or at least I
28:20
Speaker 1: looked around a little. I was having a tough time.
28:22
Speaker 1: So if you find a clip of of a good
28:25
Speaker 1: North Korean propaganda film, send it our way, post it
28:29
Speaker 1: on ridiculous historians, and I have a surprise for you know,
28:34
Speaker 1: give it to me. Ben. So we know that the
28:37
Speaker 1: Kim dynasty is able to exert tremendous influence on the country,
28:41
Speaker 1: and that means that, let's say, if Kim Jong il
28:46
Speaker 1: really wants a movie industry, then he can make the
28:48
Speaker 1: entire country help support him in this endeavor. Right, of course,
28:53
Speaker 1: you can do whatever he wants. Uh, there's a new
28:55
Speaker 1: leader in town, Kim Jong un, and Kim Jong un
29:00
Speaker 1: has an obsession of his own. In fact, just recently,
29:04
Speaker 1: North Korea officially urged all of its citizens to make
29:08
Speaker 1: the country a basketball powerhouse. North Korean state media has
29:13
Speaker 1: declared basketball to be a critical part of the state's
29:16
Speaker 1: ideology and called on all workers and soldiers to turn
29:20
Speaker 1: the nation into a global leader in the sport of basketball. Interesting,
29:25
Speaker 1: it's no coincidence, perhaps that Kim Jong un is himself
29:31
Speaker 1: a huge fan of basketball? Uh? Situation so surreal that
29:35
Speaker 1: it led to Dennis Rodman essentially functioning as a diplomat.
29:39
Speaker 1: Do you remember that when it popped up in the
29:41
Speaker 1: very much? So? I believe. Isn't there a documentary or
29:45
Speaker 1: at least a short about Dennis Rodman's behavior and the
29:49
Speaker 1: way he went to Korea? I think there is. Yes,
29:52
Speaker 1: that's correct so far. I think as of December eighteen,
29:57
Speaker 1: he's paid five visits to the capital of North Korea
30:00
Speaker 1: and even serenaded Kim Jong un with a rendition of
30:04
Speaker 1: Happy Birthday during a basketball game. So am I saying
30:08
Speaker 1: that if you were good at basketball, watch out because
30:11
Speaker 1: you might be kidnapped by North Korea? No, but you're
30:15
Speaker 1: not saying I'm not not saying. It's the point. So
30:19
Speaker 1: so let's let us know, like North Korea is a
30:23
Speaker 1: is a fascinating country. Luckily, it's much less isolated now
30:29
Speaker 1: due to the rise of technology, you know, the the
30:34
Speaker 1: increasing access people have to the internet through mobile phones
30:37
Speaker 1: and things like that. They're gross and ongoing human rights
30:41
Speaker 1: abuses in the country and in many ways it is
30:44
Speaker 1: a black hole, and much of what we know about
30:47
Speaker 1: North Korea comes from people who have left the country,
30:50
Speaker 1: who have defected for one reason or another. Today's episode
30:54
Speaker 1: examined the uh the very strange story of the people
30:57
Speaker 1: who went in the other direction. Would you ever do it?
31:01
Speaker 1: Casey Nol? Would you ever? Would you ever defect to
31:04
Speaker 1: a distant, maybe not US friendly country if it meant
31:08
Speaker 1: you could live as a king? Why not? You know? Yolo? Alright, well,
31:16
Speaker 1: tell us which country we should defect to. Thank you
31:18
Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. We would like to hear
31:21
Speaker 1: your North Korea facts, the strange trivia that you have
31:24
Speaker 1: found about it. You can share that with us and
31:27
Speaker 1: your fellow listeners on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. We also recommend
31:31
Speaker 1: ridiculous historians our community page, which is just chock full
31:35
Speaker 1: of ridiculous scrumpches. His history chocolate block. It's yes, it's
31:42
Speaker 1: it's history nuggets, is what I like to call it.
31:44
Speaker 1: There we go, There we go. It's chock full of
31:47
Speaker 1: good old history nuggets. Big thanks to our superproducer, Casey Pegram,
31:51
Speaker 1: big thanks to Alex Williams, who composed our theme, and
31:55
Speaker 1: of course thanks to Gabe, our research associate, and you
31:59
Speaker 1: know what, as we always say, thanks thanks to you know, Ben,
32:03
Speaker 1: I appreciate that from the bottom of my heart. And
32:06
Speaker 1: I whip that right across this net that it does,
32:08
Speaker 1: non existing net, This imaginary netts in the middle of
32:10
Speaker 1: our podcasting table, right back at you. But and if
32:13
Speaker 1: we didn't spend so much money on that quister grandfather clock,
32:17
Speaker 1: we could have an actual net. We could be playing
32:20
Speaker 1: ping pong while we're doing the show. That's a lot
32:22
Speaker 1: of multitasking. That's a lot of mul t. I know,
32:25
Speaker 1: I have to learn how to work this puppet before tonight,
32:28
Speaker 1: so I gotta get out of here. You were really
32:30
Speaker 1: working that puppet a little while ago, whenn't you been.
32:32
Speaker 1: We'll post it, we'll post it somewhere on social But
32:35
Speaker 1: we do actually have a puppet in the studio with
32:37
Speaker 1: us to Yeah, and it's weird when you see a
32:39
Speaker 1: puppet that does not benefiting from the hand of the puppeteer.
32:44
Speaker 1: It's just kind of slumped over in a chair. It's
32:47
Speaker 1: a little bit unnerving. It's a little bit unnerving. But
32:50
Speaker 1: maybe we'll even make a propaganda video for ridiculous history
32:54
Speaker 1: this puppet. Maybe we can kidnap other podcasters to get
32:57
Speaker 1: them to help us out. This is getting crazy. We
33:01
Speaker 1: should probably just call it a day. I agree, See
33:03
Speaker 1: you next time, folks. M