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

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