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