November 1, 2025 • 36 mins
In this weekend's Classic episode, Ben quizzes Max on his dreams of being a director, ultimately asking: What would the average person do to become famous? Often described as one of the most isolated countries in the world, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea has been ruled by the Kim dynasty since 1948. And while most reports of defectors focus on harrowing stories of North Koreans escaping to freedom in China or South Korea, a handful of people actually traveled in the other direction, defecting to North Korea. Listen in to learn more about the strange journeys American soldiers took, away from the military and straight to the forefront of North Korea's film industry.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to the show, fellow ridiculous historians. We've got
a classic episode that is near and dear to my heart.
Oh my name is Ben Bowling, my co host nol
Is on Adventures. We're joined as always with our super producer,
mister Max Williams. Max, how we doing?
Speaker 2 (00:17):
You know what we're doing?
Speaker 3 (00:19):
Well, I'm not a movie star yet, but you know,
maybe a minor podcast star.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Heah. I was gonna ask you if you ever thought
of gracing the big screen.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
When I was younger, I had dreams of being a director.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a Williams bro curse.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
I guess right.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
That's a shout out to our composer, the legendary Alex Williams,
Max's biological brother. Well, you know, I did a lot
of acting back in the day, and I still get
I still feel the code of the stage occasionally. Max. However,
a lot of people don't make it to what we
call a list movie stardom. Hollywood is a very difficulty
(01:00):
from its beginning to the modern day, and it's a
matter of having opportunity, talent, drive, and honestly, no matter
how good you are, a lot of luck, right, nepotism
also plays a role. But as we're going to see
in this classic episode, way back in the day, there
(01:21):
was a guy who figured out a shortcut to becoming
a movie star. And it's a shortcut you might be
able to use today. Caveat caveat asterisk, folks. This classic
episode is about American soldiers who defected to North Korea
and then became movie stars. Now they weren't the best movies.
(01:42):
They weren't exactly you know, Ghostbusters two or Vibes or
Police Academy four or the other What are the other classics?
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (01:52):
The Phantom menas Sure, okay, return with Skywalker. I actually
never even finished that one. I only made it forty
five minutes then to it whatever most recent Marvel movie
came out.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Sure, going to assumes bad.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
It's fantastic four.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
Oh I heard that one actuallypposed to be pretty good.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Yeah, it's pretty good. I mean it's very family centric,
but yes, so these look Most of the news you
hear about North Korea involves the oppressed members of the
North Korean public attempting to escape the country, a great risk,
right and with profound and terrible consequences for their families.
But what we don't talk about as often is the
(02:31):
number of people who've attempted to escape into North Korea,
including American soldiers. So this classic episode is about a
handful of American soldiers who bought into North Korea's message,
the pitch they were selling. They got over the border,
across the DMZ, they became members of North Korean society,
(02:56):
and the first thing the North Korean government started to
do they brainwashed them, was to cast them as evil
guys in propaganda films. Yep, that's it. Here's the show.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Oh Man, oh Man,
(03:39):
oh Man. It's our second episode of twenty nineteen, and
we're off to a great start because today we get
to talk about one of my favorite places, one of
the places I find most fascinating in the world, the
Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Welcome to Ridiculous History.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
My name is Ben, my name is Noah, and Ben,
you got me a pretty dope hat from there.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
It's true. It's true. It's true. But I hope that
I don't make our super producer Casey Pegram envious. It's
just I saw the hat and thought of you and
it was like, it's not special if I get everybody
the same hat.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Casey, only, where's that one hat that says movies.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
It's true, it's a hat that says movies. Casey on
the case. Yes, I did go to I think we
mentioned this on the show previously. In August of twenty eighteen,
I spent some time in Korea. It was amazing. It
was my first time. There's a lot of history there
and I was able to visit the DMZ. This is
(04:41):
not an episode about the DMZ. This is more I
think about the strange things that can happen when a
country is under tyrannical authoritarian rule and is largely isolated
from the rest of the world. We've talked about this
before in various podcasts. There are some universal human desires,
(05:04):
you know what I mean. People love to be entertained,
people love to have delicious food, people love to feel
influential in their circle and stuff. But when it comes
to certain industries, it's very difficult for every single country
to make its own domestic version of that industry. Like
it's really difficult to start a car industry. That's why
(05:26):
there's a relatively small number of car companies that make
cars for the rest of the world. It's also pretty
difficult where it was for some time to start a
film industry, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
So today's story touches on so many things. It touches
on the film industry, It takes place in North Korea,
It touches on the US military.
Speaker 4 (05:52):
It touches on the idea of defecting to another country,
which I think is fascinating.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Have you ever thought of defecting? Were you one of
those people who said sometime over the past few years,
I'm gonna go to Canada.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Is it called defecting?
Speaker 1 (06:06):
That would just be I think that would just be
being a refugee. Yeah, because to defect, at least in
the way we're talking, you would have to be an
active military member member.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (06:18):
And here's a question too. Don't you have to kind
of have like a real good reason to be a
refugee or to seek asylum or something like that.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Right, Yeah, That your life is in danger for maybe
your religious beliefs or maybe because of your sexual orientation,
stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
That you're suffering under some kind of totalitarian regime.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
Or if you are forced to return to the country
you will be murdered.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
Yeah, And I mean I'm not low be it unto
us to get political on ridiculous history, but starting to
feel like that could be the case for our country
one of these days.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
So in the minds of most people outside of the
DPRK North Korea, it's an enigmatic country. We for a
long time didn't know a ton about what happened there.
We just knew that it was ruled by the Kim family, right,
and that the Kim family and their inner circle, the
(07:16):
military CADRA, ran the entire country, literally ran it, and
people people had to publicly adhere to a very rigid ideology, right,
one that elevated members of the Kim family to the
status of deities or demi gods. It seems like a
weird place to move to. I mean, anybody who's ever
(07:39):
moved in their lives, any of us who have maybe
relocated to a different town or a different state or
a different country, you can realize how disorienting that is.
So imagine if you are US Army Sergeant Charles Robert Jenkins.
You don't speak Korean, right, you don't particularly enjoy being
in the military, but you do love drinking.
Speaker 4 (08:03):
You like knocking back a couple of cold ones with
your buds. Yeah, a probable buds with buds. Buds with buds.
We'll put approximately in this case.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Ten. On January fourth of nineteen sixty five, Sergeant Jenkins
deserted his infantry company at the edge of the de
militarized Zomee, walked alone across a minefield, did not blow up,
and defected to North Korea.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (08:29):
Man, the part that really got me there among the
multiple bonkers layers of this story is walked drunkenly across
a minefield.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Yeah, so after ten beers. Walked is probably a charitable description, Yeah,
which means he wasn't even mean careful. He did like
drunk boxing parkour across the minefield.
Speaker 4 (08:47):
Maybe it's one of those things, sort of like the
in Inspector Gadget cartoons where he just kind of bumbles
his way and doesn't get killed by all these various
pitfalls that could kill him, but I shere luck he
happens to dodge every single one of them, and in
some kind of physical comedy pratfall screwball kind of way,
(09:08):
are you picturing this?
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Yeah, oh exactly.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
But the folk Bear's I missed the mind, and.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
People are still scouting for active minds in the DMZ today.
You were saying that, right, Yeah, so the fact that
he made it is a stroke of brilliant luck. What
happens though, when he does finally get into North Korea,
did they welcome in with the open arms?
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Well not exactly.
Speaker 4 (09:34):
Yeah, they This is a theme that you keep you
see pop up because we're going to talk about a
handful of defectors. There weren't a lot, but there were
a few, and they all had they all shared a
similar kind of result. They were forced to hole up
in some pretty inhospitable housing and spend copious amounts of
(09:55):
time studying the writings or the principles of m Il Sung,
who is the patriarch of this Korean dynasty, this North
Korean dynasty.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Yeah, the first Supreme Leader of North Korea from its
establishment in nineteen forty eight until he died in nineteen
ninety four, and it's also known as the Great Leader.
He was declared the Eternal President of the Republic in
nineteen ninety eight, so technically he still holds a governmental
(10:27):
position after his death. So Jenkins is forced to forced
to do homework, forced to study a jiu ja philosophy
for eleven hours every day. Tell me a little bit
about jeu che philosophy, Ben jew Jay. It's interesting because
it's somewhat controversial. It's considered in the DPRK Kim Il
(10:51):
Sung's his ideology a revolutionary theory that was originally thought
to be a variety of like Marxist Leninists thought while
it incorporated these different ideas that were uniquely Korean in character,
what eventually happened is that the North Korean government adopted
(11:13):
this concept of jucha into a set of principles to
justify policy decisions from the nineteen fifties to today. And
it's got an emphasis on agricultural independence, lack of international dependencies,
you know what I mean. This it's controversial, however, because
this Korean style socialism, the thing that it is on
(11:36):
paper rarely makes it to what happens on the ground,
you know what I mean. It's better in theory than
it is in practice.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Absolutely so.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
A lot of the stuff, and this might just be
an issue of translation, A lot of the stuff in
English is very very dry and very process oriented. It's
like a dusty philosophical tone and somewhat redundant, and Jenkin
test to read this for almost twelve hours every day
until he can recite the primary principles of juch in Korea.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
That's right.
Speaker 4 (12:10):
And then he wasn't even offered a choice. At this point,
he was forced to become a North Korean citizen and
was put to work as an English translator and teacher.
And he also, you're gonna hear about this part a
little later, along with some of these other folks, was
an actor. But every move he made, as the police
(12:30):
would say, every move you make, every step you take,
supreme leaders watching you.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
I'm paraphrasing here a little bit. I thought that was
well done, the words of Sting. He was also forced
to marry a Japanese citizen who had been kidnapped by
North Korea. Her name was Hitomi Soga. She was kidnapped
in nineteen seventy eight to be a slave teacher of
Japanese language and customs for North Korean spies. The strange
(12:58):
thing about this is that Jenkins, as you mentioned, Neil Jenkins,
became an actor, but he became an actor in propaganda films.
So it turns out that Jenkins found his strange career
in propaganda films because the ruler, the son of Kim
(13:22):
Il Sung, Kim jong il, was a huge film buff,
like huge, casey, more of a film buff than any
of our mutual friends. Yeah, he has apparently like just
a huge collection of physical media.
Speaker 4 (13:36):
And I read that it was somewhere in the neighborhood
of twenty thousand pieces yea. And most of them are
bootleg because they did not have a trade relationship with
the United States, so they would have had to be
smuggled or some kind of weird bootleg versions exactly.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
Yeah, And it's strange because North Korea actually does have
a thriving animation in distry now and this pretty solid stuff.
But back then they wanted to make their own uniquely
North Korean feature films. And one of the first things
they did when they started making feature films is they
(14:12):
started making war stories, inspirational nationalistic narratives, propaganda right propaganda.
And for that they needed convincing enemies. They needed someone
to be depicted as agents of chaos from the American side,
and they said, oh, look we've got this guy, got
(14:33):
this sergeant Jenkins here. And then they also realized that
they had a couple of other defectors'.
Speaker 4 (14:42):
Right, we have a guy by the name of Larry
Abshear who crossed the DMZ on May twenty eighth at
nineteen years old. Then we have Private James Joseph Dresnok
who followed Abshear's lead I think it was three months later.
And who else do we have them?
Speaker 1 (14:59):
Then we also have Joseph White, who slipped into North
Korea in nineteen eighty two, and we have Jerry Parrish
who left for North Korea in nineteen sixty three. These
these men gave different explanations for their motivation, Right. There
(15:19):
were some who said they were sold on the communist lifestyle,
some just wanted to get away from their problems in
the West, and some just didn't know what they were doing,
you know what I mean. And it's not a situation
you could undo easily.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (15:33):
Jerry Parish didn't really give too many details other than
to say that if he ever returned home, his father
in law would kill him. So I guess a reasonable
solution to that is to, you know, defect from your country.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Right.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
He seemed like he had a legitimate fear of his life.
We wanted to go off the grid goes back to
the UN idea of pleading asylum or refugee.
Speaker 4 (15:55):
Yeah, but this is not the same as that, right,
I mean, this is very much like I am abandoning
my country, I am leaving my post, which would you
know result in like court martial or like trees and
charges I would think, wouldn't you.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Yeah, yeah it would. And this will bring us back
to Charles Jenkins in a little bit. But we've got
to tell you these guys when they were cast in
these propaganda films, they were playing evil Americans. And one
thing that was amazing about this is over time, after
several films, they became local celebrities in North Korea.
Speaker 4 (16:31):
Yeah, because it's a very insular country. So I mean,
they didn't really have that much access to any to
anything other than what was produced by the government. So
they would have been absolutely from the center, especially considering
that they were like the only Americans around.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Yeah, you know, they would have made an impression.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Yeah, absolutely, And we also have to say, without impinging
their character too much, none of these guys who defected
from the US Army were paragons of military virtue, you
know what I mean. There was one guy, Abshur that
we mentioned who was notorious for being a pothead. He
got caught multiple times getting highs.
Speaker 4 (17:13):
I mean, you don't do it willy nilly while you're
on your posts, while you're at your job.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Definitely, you know, unless your job is like you work
for High Times or something that's still around, or Vice magazine.
It's true.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
It is true.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
So these guys are quickly involved in the most surreal
sort of life. They're not just movie stars, right, They're
also icons that can be used to antagonize other members
of the US military or South Korean military. They were
Absher and Dresnok, and then later Parrish and Jenkins were
(17:50):
featured in propaganda magazines. They had put out a magazine
called Fortune's Favorites that depicted the American smiling ear to ear,
marveling at the joyous benefits of life of the DPRK.
And they had things. They had different segments or columns.
One was called Letters from Abshear and Dresnik titled to
the American Soldiers South of the DMZ. And we've got
(18:12):
a quick quotation here, dear old fellow friends, enjoying Wallam,
Welcome from the North Korean people. I put off the
disgusting GI uniform and visited Pyongyang and other cities and
villages to tell the truth. The people in North Korea
are enjoying freedom, man happiness inaccessible to the working people
(18:34):
of the United States. Now, please don't be a victim
for the Wall Street, but for y'all withdrawal from South Korea.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
Mm hmm. Now, I mean it sure sounds like we
mentioned this a little bit, but all of these gentlemen
experienced a very similar degree of indoctrination, and they were
forced to like they weren't fed properly.
Speaker 4 (18:55):
They were basically just forced to memorize these core principles.
And I don't know enough time isolated and alone, and
I think weren't some of them forced to live together
and kind of pitted against each other in some kind
of weird hunger games he kind of scenario.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
Yeah, Absher and Parish had to live together. Jenkins and
Dresnoch also had to share a home while they were
teaching English and a military academy. And that excerpt, that
excerpt had just read is clearly not written by these guys.
It's not written by Dresden.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Your accent was so convincing, man, Thank you.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
That's because he did have an accent. He was still,
i think up to until his death, had a trace
of his rural North Carolinian accent. But what we see
when we look at the way North Korea treated these
defectors is very similar to what we see when people
are indoctrinated in cults. One of the big things that
(19:51):
every cult does is to bombard people with information. It
can be senseless, it can have its own internal logic.
The point is to remove the possibility of asking questions,
just make people memorize and recite things, and then it's
very clever about putting them in homes and kind of
pitting them against each other.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Is it makes it much more likely for them to
accept their forced marriages because when they were forced to
marry other kidnapped people, often from Japan or something, it
was entirely assumed by the government that these couples would reproduce,
and then they could use the quote unquote, this is
not a phrase we're using. They could use the quote
(20:34):
unquote ethnically ambiguous children as spies. They could blend in
you know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (20:41):
Absolutely, Ben, And I think it's interesting that you talk
about the kidnapping aspect of this, because this is a
really interesting gray area to me kind of where it's
like they are submitting themselves to this.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
They made the choice either.
Speaker 4 (20:53):
Drunkenly or with some ideological kind of bent to cross
that DMZ into this other country and you know, toss
off there for the trappings of being an American, but
they also probably didn't fully know what they were signing
up for, and then they were basically thrown into this
indoctrination factory, you know, and forced to live in subhuman
(21:14):
conditions and turned into something that they were not when
they made that choice. So you know what I mean,
it's like sort of like a weird it was almost
like a Stockholm syndrome kind of thing, you know what
I mean.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
Yeah, absolutely, and some like in the case of James Dresnat,
he died happily in North Korea in twenty sixteen. He
was unrepentant. He professed support for communism. He was the
last living American defector in North Korea. He's also got
the nickname Comrade Joe in DPRK because again he's a
(21:45):
celebrity who was featured in a film called Crossing the
Line at South Korea's Pusan International Film Festival, and he
says he feels at home in the film. He never
regretted going to Korea. He seems very sincere about it.
He says his life is better because he defected, and
by North Korean standards, his life was pretty good. But
(22:08):
you can tell the lack of medical and dental care
took a toll on him, like his front teeth or
missy is that something that he acquired from North Korea,
like from violence or just fall out. He also had
a heavy, heavy drinking and smoking habits, so that took
(22:28):
a toll on him.
Speaker 4 (22:29):
We'll get this Ben. That perspective is one side of
the coin. Our boy Charles Robert Jenkins, who was kind
of the he sort of spearheaded this whole thing. Yeah,
you could say he actually escaped or was able to
leave in two thousand and four quite recently.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
So visit his mother, that's right.
Speaker 4 (22:48):
And he had some slightly less sympathetic words or kind
words to characterize the experience of these four men, if
I may, oh please quote we were all young, dumb
soldiers from poor backgrounds. I had a pretty good military record,
while the other three were pretty much total coups. As soldiers.
(23:09):
The three of them, also like me, walked across the
DMZ without really thinking about the huge consequences of what
they were doing and without understanding what North Korea was
really like. They were trapped there in North Korea. All
of them quickly grew to hate the country and would
have left in a second if they could have. What
a sorry ass little foursome we were. So, according to Jenkins,
(23:32):
any expression to the contrary from any of these guys
who he was intimately familiar with, was either forced or
a product of some kind of brainwashing.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Yeah, and it makes sense. Also, North Korea is a
very homogeneous, racist environment. I believe it was Jenkins who
says that he had only once been in the same
room with the Great Leader Kim Il sung, and Kim
snorted disapproval at jenkins Korean clothing and ordered him and
(24:04):
all other Westerners to never again sully Korean clothing. So
he wore a suit and tie afterwards. It's great detail
on that story. From the Atlantic. There's an article from
twenty thirteen called the US Soldier who Defected to North
Korea by Graham Wood. Would highly recommend checking that out.
But as you said, Noel Jenkins is a little bit
(24:26):
different because after he spent nearly forty years in North Korea,
he got out. When he left North Korea in two
thousand and four, he was sixty four years old. The
army threw him in the stockade for twenty four days.
He got a dishonorable discharge, and then eventually he and
his wife moved to Japan, where he sold crackers.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Yep, full circle.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
No, not really really No, it's weird though, because he's
still sort of an exotic icon right first in North Korea,
now in Japan. Apparently did you hear this? In Japanese culture,
he and Hitomi Soga's story about how they met and
how they married and you know, became a family is
(25:15):
considered one of the great modern romances.
Speaker 4 (25:18):
Really, yeah, I want to see yuh, you know this
is such a bonker story. Wouldn't this make a fun
like kind of screwball Cohen brother Z you're gonna say,
kind of others? Yeah, film, Yeah, because like, these two
people find love under these really weird nineteen eighty four
esque Big Brother or Wellian conditions and then they stick
(25:40):
together and they eventually when their freedom Apparently when people
walk into the shop, they start whispering to each other
and they stare at Jenkins until he caves and says,
all right, come on, you can take a picture with me.
Photo is one of the only words he.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
Knows in Japanese.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Interesting.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
There's another soldier who was thought to have possibly defected
to North Korea, a guy named Roy Chung. His story
is pretty controversial. He was born in South Koreas Chung
grew and he moved to the US with his parents
in seventy three, he joined the army and when he
needed college money. And here's the strange thing, Noel, he
(26:22):
was nowhere near Korea when he disappeared. In nineteen seventy nine,
he vanished from his unit in Germany, and three months
later the North Korean state radio announced that he had defected.
The Pentagon and State departments say that's probably true, but
his parents are still convinced he was kidnapped. Wow, no
one knows what happened to him, He just disappeared.
Speaker 4 (26:43):
Well, Ben, this has been a pretty incredible ride. I
think we have some pretty neat other kind of side
stories about some other interesting film related North Korean tales
that we could probably rap with if you want. I
don't know that there's much more to say about these
particular defectors.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Well, nothing that's been made public yet, right. The last
effector that you will hear brought up in these sorts
of lists is a guy named Joseph White, who was
considered the sixth and possibly final US soldier to defect
to the dpr K. He came aboard on August twenty eighth,
nineteen eighty two. He shot a lock off a gate
(27:26):
at the Korean DMZ and started walking through the minefields.
His mom didn't believe it first off. She said he
loved this country, loved that uniform and everything about it.
He was nothing but a gung Ho army and gung
Ho Reagan guy. But back as barracks investigators found all
these pro North Korean leaflets and propaganda, his buddies were dumbfounded,
and no one heard of him until nineteen eighty six,
(27:49):
when White's parents got a letter from someone in North
Korea who said that they were friends with the soldier
and that he had drowned in a river while enjoying
leisure time outing. So don't know what happened to him.
We do know that North Korea produced a number of
propaganda films, not just unsung heroes, not just that nineteen
(28:09):
seventy eight banger. We have a little bit of a list.
What really stuck out to you on this list of
propaganda films?
Speaker 4 (28:16):
Well, maybe this isn't necessarily a propaganda film, And I
think this is a fantastic story that apparently Kim Jong
il had some directors, very popular North Korean film directors
who escaped to Hong Kong, kidnapped and brought back to
North Korea and forced to make.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
A ripoff of Godzilla.
Speaker 4 (28:40):
Yes, Paul Gasari, and the plot of this is incomprehensible
to me. There must be some cultural thing that I'm
missing here. But apparently the story, it's the story of
a small doll made of rice that becomes a mythical
creature and helps the peasants, the proletariat, overthrow a monarchy
that is corrupting their land. So that's interesting that they
(29:04):
would cast it from the perspective of the proletariat, right,
like the peasants doing an uprising kind of right, how
does that?
Speaker 2 (29:12):
How does that serve the regime?
Speaker 1 (29:15):
You know, that's a that's a complex question. That's fair,
that's a complex question. It's a matter of perspective and zeitgeist,
isn't it. But you're right, Kim Jong Il was so
interested in film that he you know, oh do we
mention his book on the Art of the Cinema No,
so he describes his tactics of using movies as educational
(29:36):
tools to spread his ideals to the nation, sort of
the way Saddam Hussein wrote those historical fiction romance novels,
which is also really weird.
Speaker 4 (29:47):
It's true, and I believe if you want to get
a little bit deeper dive into that, you can check
out our pal Robert Evans show Behind the Bastards, where
he does an episode specifically on those romance novels of
Saddam Hussein.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
H he did. Yeah, that's true, and we'll probably have
Robert on the show again sometime soon.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
I think we love that.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
So Kim Jong Ils would be film industry was entirely
fueled by the kidnapping of directors, actors, other artists from
South Korea, from Japan in these various places. It seems
like he didn't understand that it was wrong to kidnap people.
He just thought that was the way you hired people. Yeah, exactly,
(30:26):
So there's also Soul's protests. There's Eternal Comrades, which is
it's based on this situation. In nineteen forty six, a
terrorist group tried to kill Kim Il sung. A Soviet
officer named Yakov Nevichenko saw the grenade and sacrificed himself
(30:48):
by throwing his body on top of it, and it
saved Kim Jong Il's life. And then this guy, the
Russian Nevchenko, had a large book strapped to the front
of his chest as a kind of body armor. It
saved his life too, and then that made him, I think,
the first Russian to receive the title of North Korean
(31:09):
national hero. And Eternal Comrades re enacts the events of
that day.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
Genius is it well, yeah, in terms of it being
just wild.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
Yeah, And it's weird because you can't see You can
see clips of these on YouTube and if you want
to watch them, but it's very difficult to find the
full copy of these in you know, entirely English forms,
or at least I looked around a little. I was
having a tough time. So if you find a clip
of a good North Korean propaganda film, send it our way,
(31:43):
post it on ridiculous historians, and I have a surprise
for you.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
No give it to me, Ben.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
So we know that the Kim dynasty is able to
exert tremendous influence on the country. And that means that,
let's say, if Kim Jean ung ill really wants a
movie industry, then he can make the entire country help
support him in this endeavor.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
Right, of course, he can do whatever he wants.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
There's a new leader in town, Kim Jong Un, and
Kim Jong un has an obsession of his own. In fact,
just recently, North Korea officially urged all of its citizens
to make the country a basketball powerhouse. North Korean state
media has declared basketball to be a critical part of
(32:30):
the state's ideology and called on all workers and soldiers
to turn the nation into a global leader in the
sport of basketball. Interesting it's no coincidence, perhaps that Kim
Jong un is himself a huge fan of basketball, A
situation so surreal that it led to Dennis Rodman essentially
(32:52):
functioning as a diplomat. Do you remember that when it
popped up in the marry?
Speaker 2 (32:57):
I believe isn't there a documentary or at least a
short about Dennis Robmins's behavior and the way he went
to Korea. I think there is.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
Yes, that's correct so far. I think as of December
twenty eighteen, he's paid five visits to the capital of
North Korea and even serenaded Kim Jong un with a
rendition of Happy Birthday during a basketball game. So am
I saying that if you were good at basketball, watch
out because you might be kidnapped by North Korea.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
No, but you're not not saying it.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
I'm not not saying it, is the point.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
Yeah, yeah, So.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
Let us know. Look, North Korea is a fascinating country.
Luckily it's much less isolated now due to the rise
of technology, you know, the increasing access people have to
the internet through mobile phones and things like that. They're
gross and ongoing human rights abuses in the country, and
(33:57):
in many ways it is a black hole. And much
of what we know about North Korea comes from people
who have left the country, who have defected for one
reason or another. Today's episode examined the very strange story
of the people who went in the other direction. Would
you ever do it? Casey Noel? Would you would you
(34:17):
ever defect to a distant, maybe not US friendly country
if it meant you could live as a king.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Why not?
Speaker 1 (34:27):
You know?
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Yolo?
Speaker 1 (34:30):
All right, well, tell us which country we should defect to.
Thank you so much for tuning in. We would like
to hear your North Korea facts, the strange trivia that
you have found about it. You can share that with
us and your fellow listeners on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. We
also recommend ridiculous historians our community page, which is just
chock full of ridiculous, scrumptuous history choco block. It's yes,
(34:56):
it's history nuggets. This is what I like to call it.
There we go, There we go. It's chock full of
good old history nuggets.
Speaker 4 (35:03):
Big thanks to our super producer, Casey Pegram, Big thanks
to Alex Williams who composed our theme.
Speaker 1 (35:09):
And of course thanks to Gabe, our research associate, and
you know what, as we always say, thanks thanks to
you know Ben.
Speaker 4 (35:18):
I appreciate that from the bottom of my heart, and
I whip that right across this net that does nonexistent net,
this imaginary net that's in the middle of our podcasting table,
right back at you buy man.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
If we didn't spend so much money on that quizz
Grandfather clock, we could have an actual net. We could
be playing ping pong while we're doing the show.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
That's a lot of multitasking.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
That's a lot of multi time. I know, I have
to learn how to work this puppet before tonight, so
I got to get out of here.
Speaker 4 (35:44):
You were really working that puppet a little while ago.
Once you've been we'll post it.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
We'll post it somewhere on social But we do actually
have a puppet in the studio with us too.
Speaker 4 (35:52):
Yeah, And it's weird when you see a puppet that
does not benefiting from the hand of the puppeteer.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
It's just kind of lumped over in a chair. It's
a little bit unnerving.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
It's a little bit unnerving. But maybe we'll even make
a propaganda video for ridiculous history with this puppet. Maybe
we can kidnap other podcasters to get them to help
us out. This is getting crazy. We should probably just
call it a day.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
I agree, See you next time, folks.
Welcome back to the show, fellow ridiculous historians. We've got
a classic episode that is near and dear to my heart.
Oh my name is Ben Bowling, my co host nol
Is on Adventures. We're joined as always with our super producer,
mister Max Williams. Max, how we doing?
Speaker 2 (00:17):
You know what we're doing?
Speaker 3 (00:19):
Well, I'm not a movie star yet, but you know,
maybe a minor podcast star.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Heah. I was gonna ask you if you ever thought
of gracing the big screen.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
When I was younger, I had dreams of being a director.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a Williams bro curse.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
I guess right.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
That's a shout out to our composer, the legendary Alex Williams,
Max's biological brother. Well, you know, I did a lot
of acting back in the day, and I still get
I still feel the code of the stage occasionally. Max. However,
a lot of people don't make it to what we
call a list movie stardom. Hollywood is a very difficulty
(01:00):
from its beginning to the modern day, and it's a
matter of having opportunity, talent, drive, and honestly, no matter
how good you are, a lot of luck, right, nepotism
also plays a role. But as we're going to see
in this classic episode, way back in the day, there
(01:21):
was a guy who figured out a shortcut to becoming
a movie star. And it's a shortcut you might be
able to use today. Caveat caveat asterisk, folks. This classic
episode is about American soldiers who defected to North Korea
and then became movie stars. Now they weren't the best movies.
(01:42):
They weren't exactly you know, Ghostbusters two or Vibes or
Police Academy four or the other What are the other classics?
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (01:52):
The Phantom menas Sure, okay, return with Skywalker. I actually
never even finished that one. I only made it forty
five minutes then to it whatever most recent Marvel movie
came out.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Sure, going to assumes bad.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
It's fantastic four.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
Oh I heard that one actuallypposed to be pretty good.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Yeah, it's pretty good. I mean it's very family centric,
but yes, so these look Most of the news you
hear about North Korea involves the oppressed members of the
North Korean public attempting to escape the country, a great risk,
right and with profound and terrible consequences for their families.
But what we don't talk about as often is the
(02:31):
number of people who've attempted to escape into North Korea,
including American soldiers. So this classic episode is about a
handful of American soldiers who bought into North Korea's message,
the pitch they were selling. They got over the border,
across the DMZ, they became members of North Korean society,
(02:56):
and the first thing the North Korean government started to
do they brainwashed them, was to cast them as evil
guys in propaganda films. Yep, that's it. Here's the show.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Oh Man, oh Man,
(03:39):
oh Man. It's our second episode of twenty nineteen, and
we're off to a great start because today we get
to talk about one of my favorite places, one of
the places I find most fascinating in the world, the
Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Welcome to Ridiculous History.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
My name is Ben, my name is Noah, and Ben,
you got me a pretty dope hat from there.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
It's true. It's true. It's true. But I hope that
I don't make our super producer Casey Pegram envious. It's
just I saw the hat and thought of you and
it was like, it's not special if I get everybody
the same hat.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Casey, only, where's that one hat that says movies.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
It's true, it's a hat that says movies. Casey on
the case. Yes, I did go to I think we
mentioned this on the show previously. In August of twenty eighteen,
I spent some time in Korea. It was amazing. It
was my first time. There's a lot of history there
and I was able to visit the DMZ. This is
(04:41):
not an episode about the DMZ. This is more I
think about the strange things that can happen when a
country is under tyrannical authoritarian rule and is largely isolated
from the rest of the world. We've talked about this
before in various podcasts. There are some universal human desires,
(05:04):
you know what I mean. People love to be entertained,
people love to have delicious food, people love to feel
influential in their circle and stuff. But when it comes
to certain industries, it's very difficult for every single country
to make its own domestic version of that industry. Like
it's really difficult to start a car industry. That's why
(05:26):
there's a relatively small number of car companies that make
cars for the rest of the world. It's also pretty
difficult where it was for some time to start a
film industry, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
So today's story touches on so many things. It touches
on the film industry, It takes place in North Korea,
It touches on the US military.
Speaker 4 (05:52):
It touches on the idea of defecting to another country,
which I think is fascinating.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Have you ever thought of defecting? Were you one of
those people who said sometime over the past few years,
I'm gonna go to Canada.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Is it called defecting?
Speaker 1 (06:06):
That would just be I think that would just be
being a refugee. Yeah, because to defect, at least in
the way we're talking, you would have to be an
active military member member.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (06:18):
And here's a question too. Don't you have to kind
of have like a real good reason to be a
refugee or to seek asylum or something like that.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Right, Yeah, That your life is in danger for maybe
your religious beliefs or maybe because of your sexual orientation,
stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
That you're suffering under some kind of totalitarian regime.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
Or if you are forced to return to the country
you will be murdered.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
Yeah, And I mean I'm not low be it unto
us to get political on ridiculous history, but starting to
feel like that could be the case for our country
one of these days.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
So in the minds of most people outside of the
DPRK North Korea, it's an enigmatic country. We for a
long time didn't know a ton about what happened there.
We just knew that it was ruled by the Kim family, right,
and that the Kim family and their inner circle, the
(07:16):
military CADRA, ran the entire country, literally ran it, and
people people had to publicly adhere to a very rigid ideology, right,
one that elevated members of the Kim family to the
status of deities or demi gods. It seems like a
weird place to move to. I mean, anybody who's ever
(07:39):
moved in their lives, any of us who have maybe
relocated to a different town or a different state or
a different country, you can realize how disorienting that is.
So imagine if you are US Army Sergeant Charles Robert Jenkins.
You don't speak Korean, right, you don't particularly enjoy being
in the military, but you do love drinking.
Speaker 4 (08:03):
You like knocking back a couple of cold ones with
your buds. Yeah, a probable buds with buds. Buds with buds.
We'll put approximately in this case.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Ten. On January fourth of nineteen sixty five, Sergeant Jenkins
deserted his infantry company at the edge of the de
militarized Zomee, walked alone across a minefield, did not blow up,
and defected to North Korea.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (08:29):
Man, the part that really got me there among the
multiple bonkers layers of this story is walked drunkenly across
a minefield.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Yeah, so after ten beers. Walked is probably a charitable description, Yeah,
which means he wasn't even mean careful. He did like
drunk boxing parkour across the minefield.
Speaker 4 (08:47):
Maybe it's one of those things, sort of like the
in Inspector Gadget cartoons where he just kind of bumbles
his way and doesn't get killed by all these various
pitfalls that could kill him, but I shere luck he
happens to dodge every single one of them, and in
some kind of physical comedy pratfall screwball kind of way,
(09:08):
are you picturing this?
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Yeah, oh exactly.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
But the folk Bear's I missed the mind, and.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
People are still scouting for active minds in the DMZ today.
You were saying that, right, Yeah, so the fact that
he made it is a stroke of brilliant luck. What
happens though, when he does finally get into North Korea,
did they welcome in with the open arms?
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Well not exactly.
Speaker 4 (09:34):
Yeah, they This is a theme that you keep you
see pop up because we're going to talk about a
handful of defectors. There weren't a lot, but there were
a few, and they all had they all shared a
similar kind of result. They were forced to hole up
in some pretty inhospitable housing and spend copious amounts of
(09:55):
time studying the writings or the principles of m Il Sung,
who is the patriarch of this Korean dynasty, this North
Korean dynasty.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Yeah, the first Supreme Leader of North Korea from its
establishment in nineteen forty eight until he died in nineteen
ninety four, and it's also known as the Great Leader.
He was declared the Eternal President of the Republic in
nineteen ninety eight, so technically he still holds a governmental
(10:27):
position after his death. So Jenkins is forced to forced
to do homework, forced to study a jiu ja philosophy
for eleven hours every day. Tell me a little bit
about jeu che philosophy, Ben jew Jay. It's interesting because
it's somewhat controversial. It's considered in the DPRK Kim Il
(10:51):
Sung's his ideology a revolutionary theory that was originally thought
to be a variety of like Marxist Leninists thought while
it incorporated these different ideas that were uniquely Korean in character,
what eventually happened is that the North Korean government adopted
(11:13):
this concept of jucha into a set of principles to
justify policy decisions from the nineteen fifties to today. And
it's got an emphasis on agricultural independence, lack of international dependencies,
you know what I mean. This it's controversial, however, because
this Korean style socialism, the thing that it is on
(11:36):
paper rarely makes it to what happens on the ground,
you know what I mean. It's better in theory than
it is in practice.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Absolutely so.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
A lot of the stuff, and this might just be
an issue of translation, A lot of the stuff in
English is very very dry and very process oriented. It's
like a dusty philosophical tone and somewhat redundant, and Jenkin
test to read this for almost twelve hours every day
until he can recite the primary principles of juch in Korea.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
That's right.
Speaker 4 (12:10):
And then he wasn't even offered a choice. At this point,
he was forced to become a North Korean citizen and
was put to work as an English translator and teacher.
And he also, you're gonna hear about this part a
little later, along with some of these other folks, was
an actor. But every move he made, as the police
(12:30):
would say, every move you make, every step you take,
supreme leaders watching you.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
I'm paraphrasing here a little bit. I thought that was
well done, the words of Sting. He was also forced
to marry a Japanese citizen who had been kidnapped by
North Korea. Her name was Hitomi Soga. She was kidnapped
in nineteen seventy eight to be a slave teacher of
Japanese language and customs for North Korean spies. The strange
(12:58):
thing about this is that Jenkins, as you mentioned, Neil Jenkins,
became an actor, but he became an actor in propaganda films.
So it turns out that Jenkins found his strange career
in propaganda films because the ruler, the son of Kim
(13:22):
Il Sung, Kim jong il, was a huge film buff,
like huge, casey, more of a film buff than any
of our mutual friends. Yeah, he has apparently like just
a huge collection of physical media.
Speaker 4 (13:36):
And I read that it was somewhere in the neighborhood
of twenty thousand pieces yea. And most of them are
bootleg because they did not have a trade relationship with
the United States, so they would have had to be
smuggled or some kind of weird bootleg versions exactly.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
Yeah, And it's strange because North Korea actually does have
a thriving animation in distry now and this pretty solid stuff.
But back then they wanted to make their own uniquely
North Korean feature films. And one of the first things
they did when they started making feature films is they
(14:12):
started making war stories, inspirational nationalistic narratives, propaganda right propaganda.
And for that they needed convincing enemies. They needed someone
to be depicted as agents of chaos from the American side,
and they said, oh, look we've got this guy, got
(14:33):
this sergeant Jenkins here. And then they also realized that
they had a couple of other defectors'.
Speaker 4 (14:42):
Right, we have a guy by the name of Larry
Abshear who crossed the DMZ on May twenty eighth at
nineteen years old. Then we have Private James Joseph Dresnok
who followed Abshear's lead I think it was three months later.
And who else do we have them?
Speaker 1 (14:59):
Then we also have Joseph White, who slipped into North
Korea in nineteen eighty two, and we have Jerry Parrish
who left for North Korea in nineteen sixty three. These
these men gave different explanations for their motivation, Right. There
(15:19):
were some who said they were sold on the communist lifestyle,
some just wanted to get away from their problems in
the West, and some just didn't know what they were doing,
you know what I mean. And it's not a situation
you could undo easily.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (15:33):
Jerry Parish didn't really give too many details other than
to say that if he ever returned home, his father
in law would kill him. So I guess a reasonable
solution to that is to, you know, defect from your country.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Right.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
He seemed like he had a legitimate fear of his life.
We wanted to go off the grid goes back to
the UN idea of pleading asylum or refugee.
Speaker 4 (15:55):
Yeah, but this is not the same as that, right,
I mean, this is very much like I am abandoning
my country, I am leaving my post, which would you
know result in like court martial or like trees and
charges I would think, wouldn't you.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
Yeah, yeah it would. And this will bring us back
to Charles Jenkins in a little bit. But we've got
to tell you these guys when they were cast in
these propaganda films, they were playing evil Americans. And one
thing that was amazing about this is over time, after
several films, they became local celebrities in North Korea.
Speaker 4 (16:31):
Yeah, because it's a very insular country. So I mean,
they didn't really have that much access to any to
anything other than what was produced by the government. So
they would have been absolutely from the center, especially considering
that they were like the only Americans around.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Yeah, you know, they would have made an impression.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Yeah, absolutely, And we also have to say, without impinging
their character too much, none of these guys who defected
from the US Army were paragons of military virtue, you
know what I mean. There was one guy, Abshur that
we mentioned who was notorious for being a pothead. He
got caught multiple times getting highs.
Speaker 4 (17:13):
I mean, you don't do it willy nilly while you're
on your posts, while you're at your job.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Definitely, you know, unless your job is like you work
for High Times or something that's still around, or Vice magazine.
It's true.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
It is true.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
So these guys are quickly involved in the most surreal
sort of life. They're not just movie stars, right, They're
also icons that can be used to antagonize other members
of the US military or South Korean military. They were
Absher and Dresnok, and then later Parrish and Jenkins were
(17:50):
featured in propaganda magazines. They had put out a magazine
called Fortune's Favorites that depicted the American smiling ear to ear,
marveling at the joyous benefits of life of the DPRK.
And they had things. They had different segments or columns.
One was called Letters from Abshear and Dresnik titled to
the American Soldiers South of the DMZ. And we've got
(18:12):
a quick quotation here, dear old fellow friends, enjoying Wallam,
Welcome from the North Korean people. I put off the
disgusting GI uniform and visited Pyongyang and other cities and
villages to tell the truth. The people in North Korea
are enjoying freedom, man happiness inaccessible to the working people
(18:34):
of the United States. Now, please don't be a victim
for the Wall Street, but for y'all withdrawal from South Korea.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
Mm hmm. Now, I mean it sure sounds like we
mentioned this a little bit, but all of these gentlemen
experienced a very similar degree of indoctrination, and they were
forced to like they weren't fed properly.
Speaker 4 (18:55):
They were basically just forced to memorize these core principles.
And I don't know enough time isolated and alone, and
I think weren't some of them forced to live together
and kind of pitted against each other in some kind
of weird hunger games he kind of scenario.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
Yeah, Absher and Parish had to live together. Jenkins and
Dresnoch also had to share a home while they were
teaching English and a military academy. And that excerpt, that
excerpt had just read is clearly not written by these guys.
It's not written by Dresden.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Your accent was so convincing, man, Thank you.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
That's because he did have an accent. He was still,
i think up to until his death, had a trace
of his rural North Carolinian accent. But what we see
when we look at the way North Korea treated these
defectors is very similar to what we see when people
are indoctrinated in cults. One of the big things that
(19:51):
every cult does is to bombard people with information. It
can be senseless, it can have its own internal logic.
The point is to remove the possibility of asking questions,
just make people memorize and recite things, and then it's
very clever about putting them in homes and kind of
pitting them against each other.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Is it makes it much more likely for them to
accept their forced marriages because when they were forced to
marry other kidnapped people, often from Japan or something, it
was entirely assumed by the government that these couples would reproduce,
and then they could use the quote unquote, this is
not a phrase we're using. They could use the quote
(20:34):
unquote ethnically ambiguous children as spies. They could blend in
you know what I mean.
Speaker 4 (20:41):
Absolutely, Ben, And I think it's interesting that you talk
about the kidnapping aspect of this, because this is a
really interesting gray area to me kind of where it's
like they are submitting themselves to this.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
They made the choice either.
Speaker 4 (20:53):
Drunkenly or with some ideological kind of bent to cross
that DMZ into this other country and you know, toss
off there for the trappings of being an American, but
they also probably didn't fully know what they were signing
up for, and then they were basically thrown into this
indoctrination factory, you know, and forced to live in subhuman
(21:14):
conditions and turned into something that they were not when
they made that choice. So you know what I mean,
it's like sort of like a weird it was almost
like a Stockholm syndrome kind of thing, you know what
I mean.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
Yeah, absolutely, and some like in the case of James Dresnat,
he died happily in North Korea in twenty sixteen. He
was unrepentant. He professed support for communism. He was the
last living American defector in North Korea. He's also got
the nickname Comrade Joe in DPRK because again he's a
(21:45):
celebrity who was featured in a film called Crossing the
Line at South Korea's Pusan International Film Festival, and he
says he feels at home in the film. He never
regretted going to Korea. He seems very sincere about it.
He says his life is better because he defected, and
by North Korean standards, his life was pretty good. But
(22:08):
you can tell the lack of medical and dental care
took a toll on him, like his front teeth or
missy is that something that he acquired from North Korea,
like from violence or just fall out. He also had
a heavy, heavy drinking and smoking habits, so that took
(22:28):
a toll on him.
Speaker 4 (22:29):
We'll get this Ben. That perspective is one side of
the coin. Our boy Charles Robert Jenkins, who was kind
of the he sort of spearheaded this whole thing. Yeah,
you could say he actually escaped or was able to
leave in two thousand and four quite recently.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
So visit his mother, that's right.
Speaker 4 (22:48):
And he had some slightly less sympathetic words or kind
words to characterize the experience of these four men, if
I may, oh please quote we were all young, dumb
soldiers from poor backgrounds. I had a pretty good military record,
while the other three were pretty much total coups. As soldiers.
(23:09):
The three of them, also like me, walked across the
DMZ without really thinking about the huge consequences of what
they were doing and without understanding what North Korea was
really like. They were trapped there in North Korea. All
of them quickly grew to hate the country and would
have left in a second if they could have. What
a sorry ass little foursome we were. So, according to Jenkins,
(23:32):
any expression to the contrary from any of these guys
who he was intimately familiar with, was either forced or
a product of some kind of brainwashing.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Yeah, and it makes sense. Also, North Korea is a
very homogeneous, racist environment. I believe it was Jenkins who
says that he had only once been in the same
room with the Great Leader Kim Il sung, and Kim
snorted disapproval at jenkins Korean clothing and ordered him and
(24:04):
all other Westerners to never again sully Korean clothing. So
he wore a suit and tie afterwards. It's great detail
on that story. From the Atlantic. There's an article from
twenty thirteen called the US Soldier who Defected to North
Korea by Graham Wood. Would highly recommend checking that out.
But as you said, Noel Jenkins is a little bit
(24:26):
different because after he spent nearly forty years in North Korea,
he got out. When he left North Korea in two
thousand and four, he was sixty four years old. The
army threw him in the stockade for twenty four days.
He got a dishonorable discharge, and then eventually he and
his wife moved to Japan, where he sold crackers.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Yep, full circle.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
No, not really really No, it's weird though, because he's
still sort of an exotic icon right first in North Korea,
now in Japan. Apparently did you hear this? In Japanese culture,
he and Hitomi Soga's story about how they met and
how they married and you know, became a family is
(25:15):
considered one of the great modern romances.
Speaker 4 (25:18):
Really, yeah, I want to see yuh, you know this
is such a bonker story. Wouldn't this make a fun
like kind of screwball Cohen brother Z you're gonna say,
kind of others? Yeah, film, Yeah, because like, these two
people find love under these really weird nineteen eighty four
esque Big Brother or Wellian conditions and then they stick
(25:40):
together and they eventually when their freedom Apparently when people
walk into the shop, they start whispering to each other
and they stare at Jenkins until he caves and says,
all right, come on, you can take a picture with me.
Photo is one of the only words he.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
Knows in Japanese.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Interesting.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
There's another soldier who was thought to have possibly defected
to North Korea, a guy named Roy Chung. His story
is pretty controversial. He was born in South Koreas Chung
grew and he moved to the US with his parents
in seventy three, he joined the army and when he
needed college money. And here's the strange thing, Noel, he
(26:22):
was nowhere near Korea when he disappeared. In nineteen seventy nine,
he vanished from his unit in Germany, and three months
later the North Korean state radio announced that he had defected.
The Pentagon and State departments say that's probably true, but
his parents are still convinced he was kidnapped. Wow, no
one knows what happened to him, He just disappeared.
Speaker 4 (26:43):
Well, Ben, this has been a pretty incredible ride. I
think we have some pretty neat other kind of side
stories about some other interesting film related North Korean tales
that we could probably rap with if you want. I
don't know that there's much more to say about these
particular defectors.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Well, nothing that's been made public yet, right. The last
effector that you will hear brought up in these sorts
of lists is a guy named Joseph White, who was
considered the sixth and possibly final US soldier to defect
to the dpr K. He came aboard on August twenty eighth,
nineteen eighty two. He shot a lock off a gate
(27:26):
at the Korean DMZ and started walking through the minefields.
His mom didn't believe it first off. She said he
loved this country, loved that uniform and everything about it.
He was nothing but a gung Ho army and gung
Ho Reagan guy. But back as barracks investigators found all
these pro North Korean leaflets and propaganda, his buddies were dumbfounded,
and no one heard of him until nineteen eighty six,
(27:49):
when White's parents got a letter from someone in North
Korea who said that they were friends with the soldier
and that he had drowned in a river while enjoying
leisure time outing. So don't know what happened to him.
We do know that North Korea produced a number of
propaganda films, not just unsung heroes, not just that nineteen
(28:09):
seventy eight banger. We have a little bit of a list.
What really stuck out to you on this list of
propaganda films?
Speaker 4 (28:16):
Well, maybe this isn't necessarily a propaganda film, And I
think this is a fantastic story that apparently Kim Jong
il had some directors, very popular North Korean film directors
who escaped to Hong Kong, kidnapped and brought back to
North Korea and forced to make.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
A ripoff of Godzilla.
Speaker 4 (28:40):
Yes, Paul Gasari, and the plot of this is incomprehensible
to me. There must be some cultural thing that I'm
missing here. But apparently the story, it's the story of
a small doll made of rice that becomes a mythical
creature and helps the peasants, the proletariat, overthrow a monarchy
that is corrupting their land. So that's interesting that they
(29:04):
would cast it from the perspective of the proletariat, right,
like the peasants doing an uprising kind of right, how
does that?
Speaker 2 (29:12):
How does that serve the regime?
Speaker 1 (29:15):
You know, that's a that's a complex question. That's fair,
that's a complex question. It's a matter of perspective and zeitgeist,
isn't it. But you're right, Kim Jong Il was so
interested in film that he you know, oh do we
mention his book on the Art of the Cinema No,
so he describes his tactics of using movies as educational
(29:36):
tools to spread his ideals to the nation, sort of
the way Saddam Hussein wrote those historical fiction romance novels,
which is also really weird.
Speaker 4 (29:47):
It's true, and I believe if you want to get
a little bit deeper dive into that, you can check
out our pal Robert Evans show Behind the Bastards, where
he does an episode specifically on those romance novels of
Saddam Hussein.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
H he did. Yeah, that's true, and we'll probably have
Robert on the show again sometime soon.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
I think we love that.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
So Kim Jong Ils would be film industry was entirely
fueled by the kidnapping of directors, actors, other artists from
South Korea, from Japan in these various places. It seems
like he didn't understand that it was wrong to kidnap people.
He just thought that was the way you hired people. Yeah, exactly,
(30:26):
So there's also Soul's protests. There's Eternal Comrades, which is
it's based on this situation. In nineteen forty six, a
terrorist group tried to kill Kim Il sung. A Soviet
officer named Yakov Nevichenko saw the grenade and sacrificed himself
(30:48):
by throwing his body on top of it, and it
saved Kim Jong Il's life. And then this guy, the
Russian Nevchenko, had a large book strapped to the front
of his chest as a kind of body armor. It
saved his life too, and then that made him, I think,
the first Russian to receive the title of North Korean
(31:09):
national hero. And Eternal Comrades re enacts the events of
that day.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
Genius is it well, yeah, in terms of it being
just wild.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
Yeah, And it's weird because you can't see You can
see clips of these on YouTube and if you want
to watch them, but it's very difficult to find the
full copy of these in you know, entirely English forms,
or at least I looked around a little. I was
having a tough time. So if you find a clip
of a good North Korean propaganda film, send it our way,
(31:43):
post it on ridiculous historians, and I have a surprise
for you.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
No give it to me, Ben.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
So we know that the Kim dynasty is able to
exert tremendous influence on the country. And that means that,
let's say, if Kim Jean ung ill really wants a
movie industry, then he can make the entire country help
support him in this endeavor.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
Right, of course, he can do whatever he wants.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
There's a new leader in town, Kim Jong Un, and
Kim Jong un has an obsession of his own. In fact,
just recently, North Korea officially urged all of its citizens
to make the country a basketball powerhouse. North Korean state
media has declared basketball to be a critical part of
(32:30):
the state's ideology and called on all workers and soldiers
to turn the nation into a global leader in the
sport of basketball. Interesting it's no coincidence, perhaps that Kim
Jong un is himself a huge fan of basketball, A
situation so surreal that it led to Dennis Rodman essentially
(32:52):
functioning as a diplomat. Do you remember that when it
popped up in the marry?
Speaker 2 (32:57):
I believe isn't there a documentary or at least a
short about Dennis Robmins's behavior and the way he went
to Korea. I think there is.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
Yes, that's correct so far. I think as of December
twenty eighteen, he's paid five visits to the capital of
North Korea and even serenaded Kim Jong un with a
rendition of Happy Birthday during a basketball game. So am
I saying that if you were good at basketball, watch
out because you might be kidnapped by North Korea.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
No, but you're not not saying it.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
I'm not not saying it, is the point.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
Yeah, yeah, So.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
Let us know. Look, North Korea is a fascinating country.
Luckily it's much less isolated now due to the rise
of technology, you know, the increasing access people have to
the internet through mobile phones and things like that. They're
gross and ongoing human rights abuses in the country, and
(33:57):
in many ways it is a black hole. And much
of what we know about North Korea comes from people
who have left the country, who have defected for one
reason or another. Today's episode examined the very strange story
of the people who went in the other direction. Would
you ever do it? Casey Noel? Would you would you
(34:17):
ever defect to a distant, maybe not US friendly country
if it meant you could live as a king.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Why not?
Speaker 1 (34:27):
You know?
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Yolo?
Speaker 1 (34:30):
All right, well, tell us which country we should defect to.
Thank you so much for tuning in. We would like
to hear your North Korea facts, the strange trivia that
you have found about it. You can share that with
us and your fellow listeners on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. We
also recommend ridiculous historians our community page, which is just
chock full of ridiculous, scrumptuous history choco block. It's yes,
(34:56):
it's history nuggets. This is what I like to call it.
There we go, There we go. It's chock full of
good old history nuggets.
Speaker 4 (35:03):
Big thanks to our super producer, Casey Pegram, Big thanks
to Alex Williams who composed our theme.
Speaker 1 (35:09):
And of course thanks to Gabe, our research associate, and
you know what, as we always say, thanks thanks to
you know Ben.
Speaker 4 (35:18):
I appreciate that from the bottom of my heart, and
I whip that right across this net that does nonexistent net,
this imaginary net that's in the middle of our podcasting table,
right back at you buy man.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
If we didn't spend so much money on that quizz
Grandfather clock, we could have an actual net. We could
be playing ping pong while we're doing the show.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
That's a lot of multitasking.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
That's a lot of multi time. I know, I have
to learn how to work this puppet before tonight, so
I got to get out of here.
Speaker 4 (35:44):
You were really working that puppet a little while ago.
Once you've been we'll post it.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
We'll post it somewhere on social But we do actually
have a puppet in the studio with us too.
Speaker 4 (35:52):
Yeah, And it's weird when you see a puppet that
does not benefiting from the hand of the puppeteer.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
It's just kind of lumped over in a chair. It's
a little bit unnerving.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
It's a little bit unnerving. But maybe we'll even make
a propaganda video for ridiculous history with this puppet. Maybe
we can kidnap other podcasters to get them to help
us out. This is getting crazy. We should probably just
call it a day.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
I agree, See you next time, folks.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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