CLASSIC: North Korea: Fact and Fiction

In an age of global connectivity, North Korea remains one of the most isolated -- and enigmatic -- countries on Earth. How much do we really know about it?

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

They don't want you to read our book.: https://static.macmillan.com/static/fib/stuff-you-should-read/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So this week's classic episode is from twenty fifteen. This
is where Matt, this is where you and I are
exploring what is sometimes called the Hermit Kingdom. And I
was thinking back on this episode and so very much
has changed. We've been following North Korea for a while. Yeah,

(00:21):
I believe Kim Jong un came into power several years
before he made this episode, but not that long. He
was still pretty early into his reign in the DPRK
and I recall just exploring a lot of that dynamic,
the power dynamic, the family dynamic of the dynasty there.

(00:44):
And uh man, there's a lot that I learned here,
I would say from you Ben about the Hermit Kingdom
in this episode. So I'm excited to re listen. Well, thanks, Matt.
I am as well. Just a caveat a lot of
things have changed again, so please if you'd like to
learn more about North Korea, check out the other episodes

(01:06):
we have done on the DPR game. But this is
definitely the first. Seriously, this is where I learned, Like
everything I started learning about North Korea is because of
this episode. From UFOs two Ghosts and Government cover Ups.
History is writtled with unexplained events. You can turn back
now or learn the stuff they don't want you to. Now. Hello,

(01:31):
welcome to the show. My name is Matt and i'm Ben,
and today I think we should get started with a
little anecdote that Ben has sure all right, So, once
upon a tide there was a man named Kinji Fujimoto.
Kinji was a chef. Kenji was a sushi chef to
be specific, and he was quite good at his job.

(01:56):
But he was also a member of the Union of
Sushi Chefs, and when he was a young, adventurous man,
they made him a candidate for a mysterious job overseas. Now,
the rules of the union said that Knji had to
accept this job before he knew exactly what the assignment was.

(02:17):
And that is how Kiji Fujimoto became the sushi chef
for Kim Jong Il, the leader at the time of
North Korea. Whoa oh, but wait, Kinji confirms so many
of the stories that we are going to talk about today,
especially regarding Kim Jong Il. Now we don't want to

(02:39):
spoil the surprise, but we will say that he had
a seven hundred thousand dollar a year Kanyak Habit Woa
how do you consume that much? Koonyak? I you know what,
I don't know. I assume it wasn't all him for everybody,
but he's yeah, this it's like ordering ease dip for

(03:00):
the table at all times, at all times cognac. And
let that serve as an introduction, ladies and gentlemen, you're
in the right place. We hope. Here you are again
with Matt Ben super producer, Noel the Madman Brown and
that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. Today, Matt,
Finally we're exploring North Korea. That's right, we're getting deep

(03:24):
into the DPRK. I'm excited about this one, Ben. This
is fascinating from so many angles to me, at least personally,
and we certainly hope that you find it interesting as well.
Let's get started with looking at some of the history
in how North Korea was first formed, because it's a
fairly recently formed country, right, oh, yeah, you only have

(03:45):
to go back to nineteen at the close or just
right at the close of World War two when Korea
the I guess the if you look at it as
a large state together at the peninsula, it was divided
up at thet parallel by the United States and the
Soviet Union, two forces that were embattled UH in the

(04:10):
on the Korean Peninsula. And it's called, I said, the DPRK.
You might not know this, you might already know this,
but North Korea is officially called the Democratic People's Republic
of Korea, and it was officially established on the ninth
of September nineteen And as students of history know, during

(04:33):
World War Two, the Allied parties were definitely not the
friendly parties. It was more of an enemy of my
enemy kind of deal. So there was already this tense
situation between UH, the United States and the USS are
about which competing ideology would would rule the world. Unless

(04:58):
if if you are familiar with one of one of
your favorite things met the high Gilian dialect, right, then
then maybe that's a little bit of a false dichotomy.
But that's a different show. Here's the point. The point
is that tensions were high on the peninsula, and people
knew on both sides that this would be a flash point,

(05:25):
and it eventually escalated. It did just a few years later,
from forty to nineteen fifty. It escalated into the Korean War,
which lasted from nineteen fifty to nineteen fifty three. What
kind of war was this? Well, I guess it was
somewhat of a civil war between the two Korea's, because
really there they would be one unified Korea, muginous population.

(05:50):
But we think, and I think history has shown that
it was much more of what we would call a
proxy war between these two opposing sides. Now we we
have a video on this, but for people who haven't
seen the video, what is a proxy war? It's when
to let's say, superpowers have competing interests in one area,

(06:11):
and rather than sending their army at least as a
whole or their military as a whole to go fight there,
they will use let's say the indigenous people of that
area or groups that are closely related that you might
be able to exert some control over and have them
fight that battle, and then maybe you can sprinkle in

(06:32):
a little bit of a little bit of your military
height as well, so I kind of help them out.
Similar to what's going what's happened in Afghanistan in the
nineteen eighties, right, very similar, which you can you can
see more about or you see it alluded to in
that show the Americans, which if you enjoy espionage, we recommend.

(06:53):
In fact, the Korean War was the first armed conflict
of the Cold War. Yeah, scary stuff. But what happened
when the fighting ended? Because this is this is something
that a lot of people don't know. There's a very
important point here. Well. One of the biggest important points
are the number of people killed. Over a million people

(07:15):
were killed during this conflict, not just soldiers, civilians as well.
This was so many civilians. And one of the biggest
facts that will lead into reasoning behind a lot of
the stuff we're gonna talk about is that almost every
single large, especially important building in North Korea was completely destroyed,

(07:39):
specifically by the U. S. Army, right, the US Air Force. Uh, well,
completely different things like the army wasn't there, It's true.
But yeah, so at the close of this war, after
this this massive toll in terms of property and human life, Uh,
the sides of the conflict created an armistice. And this

(08:04):
armistice included a lot of things, but it was missing
perhaps the most important. So, so what kind of stuff
did this include? You're looking at a ceasefire, You're looking
at POWs prisoners of war going back to their side
um repatriation. You're looking at the demilitarized zone the d
m Z. We'll talk about that a little later. You're

(08:27):
also looking at basically when the fighting ended. There was
no official final treaty that was signed, No no formal
peace agreement was ever agreed upon. Yes, and that is
the most important thing that was missing, Ladies and gentlemen.
There is, technically speaking, UH, the equivalent of a cease

(08:49):
fire for more than fifty years between North Korea and
South Korea, between the DPRK and the r O k UH.
The strange thing about this is that so much of
what would be a formal peace agreement depends upon the
idea of reunification of the peninsula, which is something else

(09:13):
we can talk about, but it's it's important to remember
when you when you read this bellicoast or warlike propaganda online,
and I do recommend you visit North Korea's official news
site if you're a fan of this sort of thing
the way that I am. Um, What you have to
remember is that this is the same level of wartime

(09:33):
propaganda that you would see in the United States in
World War Two. You know what I mean by war
bonds or the Nazis will get you kind of stuff. Um,
so it's not it's not as crazy as it might
sound from the outside. And for the interim for a
little while after the formation here, uh, there were tough times,

(09:54):
but DPRK at times was more successful in some ways then. Uh.
South Korea the Republic of Korea, and it was all
under its leader who built a cult of personality. Yes,
a cult of personality is very important in this story
as well. Um, should we go into a little bit

(10:16):
about just the the view top down view of North
Korea again, looking at maybe population sure North Korea today,
So the population is estimated at twenty four million, nine million, Yeah,
a little under twenty five million. You'll see estimates fluctuate. Yeah,

(10:37):
and it's that's you know, a lot of people, especially
if you think that the entire area is listed as
forty six thousand, five and twenty eight square miles, which
is about the size of Pennsylvania. Right. Yeah, And just
for comparison, South Korea is has a population of around

(10:57):
forty eight million. I want to say, so North Korea
is the less populous of the two. Um, but of
the let's go ahead and say of the twenty four
million people living in North Korea. Uh. There there's a
certain population that we particularly want to talk about in
highlight in today's show, and that is the that is

(11:21):
the group of an estimated two hundred thousand people as
as we record this, that are in labor camps. Yes,
quanly so is what this system of camps is called?
Could you tell us a little more about it? Well,
it's it's really interesting stuff you get into. You get

(11:42):
placed in one of these in a couple of different ways.
Usually has to do with whether or not you are
seen as loyal to the party. Um, but maybe not
just you. It might be that your grandfather wasn't loyal
to the party, or maybe even your grand daughter or
grandson isn't loyal to the party, and you might find

(12:05):
yourself in one of these labor camps. So you've got
it's this really interesting thing that you're you go over
really well in the video that's that came out this
week about five things they don't want you to or
five things you might not know about North Korea. If
you haven't seen it, check it out. Um. The reasons
is so interesting to me is that I've never heard

(12:25):
of this before. I've never heard of this happening. And
you had mentioned to me earlier that their Confucianism might
play a part in the reasoning behind this process. Yes, uh,
Confucianism does play a part to some degree. What what
we're talking about here is the idea of intergenerational punishment.

(12:47):
So this could mean that you are in a labor
camp not only for a crime that you yourself did
not commit, but maybe a crime that you are not
aware of one of your relatives committing. And a crime
here is not necessarily you know, crime like beauty is
in the eye of the beholder, right, or in the
eye of the judicial system, right. So what we find

(13:10):
here is that there are three generations of punishment. Collective
punishment is practiced unto three generations, which sounds almost biblical. Yeah. Uh,
So you're to take um to dovetail off your early example, Matt.
This means that maybe your grandfather UM committed a crime

(13:31):
or was against party ideology, and you came from good family.
Family is very very important in this society. This means
that Um, your parents and you are going to feel
the consequences of that. This can be something where you're
just in a slightly lower class for a while or

(13:53):
this could be something where you are born in a
labor camp with no idea, not even of the world
outside North Korea, but no idea of the world outside
the labor camp or understanding of why you are there
in the beginning. Uh, it is just a tortuous, horrible Um,
it's it's an atrocity. Yeah, and exactly. And from what

(14:16):
I've gathered, you will live your entire life there and
possibly even have to have children, and then they live
their entire lives there, and and that's it. Then then
you're done. Now it's important to say that to give
a picture of these labor camps, A lot of this
is a very hard manual labor. Of course, Um, children

(14:39):
to write children to. Punishments are harsh. Food is very scarce.
And when I say harsh punishments, I mean up to
and including arbitrary torture. Um. This this is a family show,
so we won't go too much into this, but there

(15:00):
are instances you know, of beating to death, of forced abortions,
exposure to the elements, um, being forced to eat feces,
and uh, the list goes on. So what what we're
saying here is that there is a segment of this

(15:20):
population that due to collective punishment, exists under under these
terrible circumstances. Uh. And it makes you wonder, which is
a question we'll get at later towards the end of this.
It makes you wonder how much of this is propaganda

(15:42):
from defectors, because again, it's hard to learn about a
lot of this stuff, and a lot of it comes
has anecdotal evidence from people who perhaps escaped, right, and
we see satellite imagery, but it's not as if, you know,
Advice did a documentary on North Korea, but it's not
as if they made it to a labor camp that was,
although they did make it to that place in Russia.

(16:04):
So before we get sidelined too much here, one of
the questions would be, well, why is this government being supported? Right? Sure,
because historically it was supported. It's primary benefactor was the U.
S SR. But that no longer exists. That's a problem,
and relationships with Russia have have cooled a lot. So

(16:26):
who is the main benefactor of North Korea now? Well,
currently it's China, but it's not exactly an ideal partnership.
So like their Facebook status would be its complications, That's
exactly right. Another thing to note here is that the

(16:46):
DPRK does have some sort of nuclear weaponry. Uh. They've
got I think an estimated two warheads maybe, um, but
there's really no reliable, a livery system like intercontinental ballistic
missiles that are just ready to go. And especially if
you only got two warheads, I mean, it would be

(17:08):
a short lived big bang attack. But there, yeah, but
there it is still dangerous, right, and they're working on, um,
having this ballistic capability and actively working toward nuclear weaponry
as opposed to a country like Iran, which according to

(17:31):
numerous intelligence agencies recently isn't exactly but coming out of Africa,
where did it come out of South Africa? Yeah, it
came out of these Uh, lazy gentleman, Matt and I
are talking about some recent leaks before we went to
air this week from the South African intelligence agencies that
revealed so much stuff. Let's just talk about real quick.

(17:52):
Let's just launch your list of stuff. Well okay, um,
A lot of it that I read specifically had to
do with Iran. Um. And just the lines that we've
been getting from certain countries, including our own, just that
are complete, yes, right, especially the prime Minister of Israel,

(18:14):
Benjamin Netan Yahoo UH saying that, you know, it's something
we've talked about before. Iran is always in some weird
according to its opponents, Iran has always in some weird
alice in wonderland state. You know, uh bombs yesterday, bombs tomorrow,
but never ever bombs today, and they're always a year
away or ten, like five years away or whatever. And

(18:36):
it turns out that the that Massad, the Israeli equivalent
of the c I A I guess, said that Uh,
Iran's definitely is not doing it. Yeah, it just has down.
We're not worried and this, I mean, it's kind of
messed up, but I would definitely trust the Massad's word.

(18:57):
Uh if it's if it is in this content is
being leaked. Yeah. We also found some other stuff there.
Let's see UH Korean stuff specifically like South Korea targeting
the president of green Peace peace officials from monitoring and
m I six, which is UH the UK Intelligence agency

(19:21):
attempting to uh create to get a spy in North Korea.
I thought, yeah, that's that's a soft order, man, it's
a tall order. And that's because um, we can recap
some of our earlier stuff here. That's because North Korea
is very much a closed society. It's a homogeneous, largely
homogeneous society. Um, because North Korea has a class system,

(19:44):
which we'll talk about in a little bit more detail.
But if we're talking about this, let's go ahead and
start at the very top of the social hierarchy of
the DPRK and that is the Kim dynasty. That's right.
You gotta start with the O G. Kim Il sung Uh,

(20:05):
the father of Kim Jong il, and then in turn
the grandfather of Kim Jong oon, the current leader. Yes,
Kim Il sung is the is a godlike figure. Uh.
Kim Il sung is the internal leader of North Korea,
which means that technically speaking, he is considered still the

(20:27):
leader of North Korea despite his death. There's your three
generational rule there. Ah. Yes, and it's interesting that you
say that. Well, we'll see how that shakes out later. Yes,
Kim Il sung is referred to as the Great Leader,
the country's eternal president. His birthday as a holiday, it's

(20:48):
called the Day of the Sun. Uh. He ruled North
Korea for forty six years from until he passed away
in nineteen ninety four UM. During the time leading up
to his passing away, his son Kim Jong Il, who
most of us will probably remember better, he took leadership

(21:11):
and it was during his rule that the country encountered
some of those very tense difficult times, including the famine
known as the Arduous March, and nuclear standoffs. But we
have a new leader now, and that is one of
his sons, right, Kim Jong He was selected by Kim

(21:34):
John Hill over his other two brothers. Yes, I mean, hey,
props man, right, yeah. He he is interesting because he
has a UM. He has a European schooling, so he
is someone who has been raised outside of the country
and I believe he went to school in Switzerland. Now

(21:57):
he is not necessarily the um. He he is not
necessarily the air apparent in the way you would think
these things would normally go. He's not the eldest son. No,
there there were issues, let's say, with two of the
other candidates that would have been before him, right, yeah,

(22:18):
So there are two other candidates. There was Kim Jong
Nam and Kim Jong chul uh. And I'm mispronouncing. I apologize.
I don't speak Korean very well. But the the brothers
were the brothers who didn't make it. Um, we're passed
over because one of them was caught trying to go

(22:40):
to uh Tokyo Disneyland in two thousand one and there
was a huge embarrassment. One of the others was seen
as a feminate by their father. Uh So, here we
are with Kim Jong un as the leader of the
DPRK or at least the face of it. And and

(23:02):
that's that's the important thing, right, despite the appearance of
an absolute monarchy, right, the private version seems a little
bit different. There are a lot of high ranking senior
officials that um date back or did date back all
the way to the days of Kim Il song and
seniority being so important in this society, their words carry weight.

(23:22):
Oh yeah, And it's I feel like the system is
kind of similar to the high advisors that let's say
the president listens to on a daily basis to make
high level decisions, even if they're repeatedly wrong. Oh yeah,
but it's you know, you have you kind of have
to go with a person that probably knows best, right yeah.

(23:44):
Uh And another another weird thing here. Uh So, the
stated aim of North Korea is reunification it's something that
both Koreas want in principle, right, and uh, the problem
there is that the the problem there is that there's
just a battle of population that occurs because both both

(24:09):
want the peninsula reunified in some manner or way, because
there were families that were split apart by this division,
this thirty parallel division. Um. But you know, both countries
want to be in the driver's seat, right. And then
when you look at the population, you you mentioned that
the Republic of Korea has almost twice as many almost

(24:33):
twice as many people. Um. So it would seem as
though if you were just looking from that aspect alone,
they would kind of absorb North Korea, or at least
that's the way it seems. And I'm pretty certain North
Korea wouldn't want that, right. Uh. We we are gonna
look at some of the questions about that too towards

(24:54):
towards the ends here. Now that you watched the interview, right,
I did. Yeah, I watched the interview. Two. It wasn't
it wasn't my favorite thing. I felt like, you know,
what's what's the point where uh, satire just becomes kind
of racism. But I'm a big fan of Seth Rogan
and James Franco. I think they're funny guys. Um, the

(25:17):
guy who played Kim Jong and is a really funny dude. Uh.
But you know, you have to wonder how much of
that is again like propaganda. But there was a great
point in interview where they say that there is a
false impression that this nation strives to give visitors and
the outside world. Oh yeah, the I'm thinking of the

(25:39):
scene in particular where James Franco's character goes and finds
that little food store and it's just all fake food. Um,
it's all props, essentially set ups for him and other
outsiders to think that there's plentiful food in the area. Yeah,
there's a great reddit a m a from a North

(26:02):
from a photographer who was traveling to North Korea pretty
often until he started being refused entry for taking photos
you shouldn't take, and he said that there are a
few there's like two supermarkets in Kong Young or something,
but the only people who can really shop at those
are the elite. Um. We know that there is propaganda

(26:25):
at work in North Korea, and you know it's it's
its own industry as well, So it's difficult to understand
how much of what the government says is true, how
to parse the truth between the statements. But there's another point.
This makes us think of, well, yeah, it's not just
propaganda coming out of North Korea about how great it is.

(26:47):
There's also a ton of propaganda aimed at you about
how bad North Korea is and all these terrible things
and how everyone there is starving. Although there is some
truth to it it, a lot of this stuff are
just exaggerations to kind of shape your view of the
country as a whole. Right, there's a lot of an

(27:08):
echo chamber going on. Uh. And nowhere was this more
apparent than UH in the recent interview related news story
Froth Korea. Right, yeah, it was. It was absolutely North
Korea doing these cyber attacks against Sony. We're not saying
it wasn't, but we are saying, uh, that's a heck

(27:30):
of a leap to make. And there were credible, very
credible people saying that it absolutely wasn't North Korea. So
you know, you just I just have to open open
your third high Maybe I don't know, I can't. I
don't know how you figure out what's true or not
these days. So we do know that with that being said,
with that wheelbarrow salt poured onto the idea of all

(27:53):
these stories you hear from North Korea and about North Korea.
We do know that some of the crazier stories are
are true, because, as we said at the top, we
have our friend Kinji Fujimoto who was able to confirm
some and then we have some some good firsthand reports here.
So what's what's one crazy story? All right? Well, you
are going to have to elaborate on this one for me.

(28:14):
But I remember hearing a story about a rabbit breeding
program that didn't go very well, or they're very it's
a very large species of rabbit that I guess North
Korea wanted to have a small population of them in
order to breed them. Yes, yeah, it's true. So in

(28:37):
I guess two thousand seven or so, twelve giant rabbits
were delivered to North Korea. Uh. The breeder who sent
them UH found he thought they were going to be
used to make a rabbit farm. Uh, but he suspected
that they were eaten by the top officials. Um Berlin's
North Korean embassy denied the allegations, but you can read

(28:59):
some more about this in spiegel Um, the online, the
German journalism. This is an article by David Crossland. And
these rabbits guys are so big, their biggest dogs they
make about eight kilos of of me Umsolutely, yeah, that's huge.
But it may have been I was thinking about this.

(29:21):
It may have been despite the food shortage that they
tried the rabbits, because you should try before you like
do this whole thing. You want to start a rabbit
industry if nobody wants them. Nobody wants them. But maybe
they ate them and they didn't taste good. That's that's
another I could see that. I could see that, um.
But there are other crazy stories as well. Another story

(29:44):
is that there is a difference in size between North
and South Korean nationals, and it's thought to be due
to to maulnutrition that North Koreans were subjected to. Yeah,
you hear this a lot from especially from a mayor Ricans. So.
Former presidential candidate John McCain talked about it in a

(30:05):
two thousand and eight debate, Christopher Hitchens talked about it
in an article and Slate. Uh. But some actual research
instead of just rhetoric, came from guy named Professor Daniel
Schweckendik from a university and soul. He said that on average,
North Korean men are about one and a half to

(30:27):
three inches shorter than men in South Korea. And the
interesting thing is that due to the homogeneous nature of
the population, like genetically, right, we know that this doesn't
come from a large variation or diversity in the gene pool.
It comes from environmental factors like nutrition. But that brings

(30:51):
us to something else, all right, Matt, this is one
of the craziest stories. Uh. Starvation, yes, been. Starvation and
food insecurity in general is a huge issue in North Korea. Um,
it's a life threatening issue that I mean, this is
one of the big worries in your life if you're

(31:14):
a North Korean. And like, we can look at one
of these things like during the famine of nine nineties,
that's the thing you mentioned earlier, the arduous march somewhere,
and there is a huge, huge variant in number here,
but somewhere between two hundred and forty thousand and three
point five million North Koreans died of starvation or some

(31:34):
form of hunger related issue. Right, Yeah, so maybe not
just starvation directly, but something exacerbated by starvation. Uh. This yeah,
this number is uh, it's a huge number. It's a
huge variance, as we said. But first, in a country
that does keep adequate records or does allow people in

(31:58):
more easily the uh, you still have a variance. You
still have a variance because it's difficult to say the
exact cause of death, right. But then in countries Uh.
But in the case of North Korea, this is even
more difficult because there are very few official numbers kept
and that's been the case for fifty years. This leads

(32:20):
us to something darker though, Yep, cannibalism. So there is
confirmation of let's say, isolated cases of why and you know,
there are also a lot of rumors about cannibalism, right.
So some of these isolated cases would be stuff like
a grandfather digging up his children's graves after they passed

(32:42):
away and eating them, Yeah, because he had to the idea.
But there are also these rumors of large scale cannibalism
that took place during certain times in North Korea. Um.
But really, we we don't know. We can't prove it, right,
because these stay means come down often through defectors right

(33:03):
through the eye of defectors, and uh, I'd like to
take just a moment to trace the path the defector
goes to. So if you if you make it to
South Korea from North Korea, then you are going to
be accepted into South Korean society. They have subsidies set up,
they have some orientation programs, right, and that's very important

(33:27):
because there are a lot of things that are going
to be so unfamiliar. But to get to South Korea
is the difficult part. It's sort of like how um
in the United States. If you are from Cuba and
you manage to make it to the mainlands, right, then
you are allowed to stay. But uh, you have to

(33:49):
make it through that ninety miles of water first and
if you get caught before then you're fair game and
people will turn you back. So if you leave North Korea,
you um. And typically what we see are often with
the assistance of Christian groups or bribing guards, people go
over to China, they go over to the border and

(34:11):
cross the river. The the entrance straight into South Korea
via the DMZ is just not going to happen. It's
it's um. It's far too armed to the teeth on
both sides. But if you go to China and China
finds you, you will be deported back to North Korea

(34:31):
where you will almost certainly be sent to a labor
camp on And if you leave and it's proven that
you have left, then it could also potentially punish three
generations of your family. So of the people who travel,
many travel you know, directly to China and UH. Of

(34:54):
the women who travel there are traffic UH or in
foce marriages, and the people who do make it, China
considers these people economic migrants, not refugees. The legal distinction
sounds um, you know, it sounds like semantics to us.
But it's a lot of people's lives hinge on this,

(35:16):
and the mission is to make it to an embassy
where they're safe. You can go onto YouTube right now,
UH and just search for North Korean refugees, China and
embassy and you will see heartbreaking footage of groups of
people making it. Chinese guards outside, not getting all of them,

(35:38):
but stopping some. And that's where it ends. The embassy
cannot do anything for you if you are right outside
the door. So when these when these people UM, when
these the factors passed through, if they make it via
you know, like Thailand, China, Mongolia, and in China again,

(35:59):
a lot of the assistants of Christian groups if they
make it there, they often talk about their experiences in uh,
North Korea. And we have to have some deal of
skepticism because it's true that a lot of people are
saying the same thing. But uh, what is the evidence

(36:19):
other than that hearsay? Is it possible that um, you know,
factions of the South Korean government or even the US
government are encouraging this kind of like encouraging a rhetoric
of some sort, or is this just the truth of
these people participating in starvation cannibalism. Ah, that is a

(36:44):
heavy one, Ben, Yeah, sorry, that was a monologue. It's
all good, Okay. I have a question that maybe our
listeners would like to ask you. How how did you
learn so much about this subject? Oh? I don't I
don't know. I appreciate the flattery, but I don't know

(37:04):
very much about North kreo ale compared to a lot
of people. This is just something that US has fascinated
me for a long time. You know, my background is
in international affairs and always seemed enigmatic and full of
questions to me. Imply questions, why aren't world powers doing

(37:25):
more or to to help if this, if this is
such an important thing, and um, how did this unique
government begin? You know? Oh? Yeah, sure, well it seems
like you're absolutely right. It seems like one of those
things that once you learn about it, that why if
anybody knows about it, why isn't there more being done

(37:46):
to change the situation? Now? What what about the what
about the next thing here? This is a weird sort
what about the crime? Oh little crime, little crime action. Uh.
I don't know if any of you are watching better
call Saul, but you probably should be if you are not. Uh.

(38:06):
North Korea turns out is pretty good at making meth,
at least certain factions, certain groups are really good at it. Um. Yeah, yeah,
they officially deny it. However, during the nineties of government
had this unit called Office thirty nine, and it was

(38:28):
tasks to raise hard currency for Kim Jong Ill and
they produced not just meth but also opium, that thing
that we've talked about pretty extensively on this show. H Again,
these are two things that seem to be able to
if you were able to produce them, generate a large
flow of cash and What's what's also interesting here is

(38:52):
despite these official denials, in two thousand ten, I believe uh,
South Korea's Donga Ilbow claimed that Chinese police had seized
sixty million dollars worth of drugs made by the DPRK.
She's so maybe this idea of not making meth is
a myth which brings us to myths about North Korea. Uh,

(39:17):
you've got you've got a big one for us, right, Matt. Well,
the first thing that you might not know is that
the citizen re as a whole, or at least large
chunks of the citizen re in the DPRK are not
as uninformed as some people would want you to think. Uh,
there are there's a whole black market of phones and
other telecommunic telecommunication devices, internet connections, um, all kinds of

(39:41):
smuggled media gets in South Korean soap operas are pretty popular. Well,
that's good. Well, the the interesting thing here is, you know,
people are so often taught, or were historically taught in
North Korea that uh, they were living in the best
possible situation in the world, and that people in South

(40:02):
Korea didn't have food or shoes or places to sleep.
And now this is this has become a parent that's
not true. Another myth, um, Well, I think it is
a myth, and I know some people might not agree here.
Another myth is that North Korea itself is a communist country,

(40:23):
that the DPRK is a communist country. Well, yeah, I
think I thought it was ben Well so did I'm
at for for a long time. This brings us to
a book, quite a good book, a controversial book called
The Cleanest Race or How North Korean See Themselves and
Why It Matters. It's by an author named Brian Reynold Myers,

(40:44):
and in this book, Myers contends that far from being
a communist state the way that the West would understand it,
or the way that a communist would understand it, uh,
the North Korean society is much more now nationalistic and
based on this idea of racial purity, the concept being

(41:05):
that the people of this country are so pure and
virtuous that they must be protected from the barbaric outside
world by this this carrying omnipotent benefactor. Is it bad
that I'm seeing parallels there between being protected by protected

(41:25):
from terrorism and American exceptionalism. I don't know. That's a
very interesting parallel. To draw maybe listeners, let us know
what you think with that parallel there, because I'm sorry,
this is the most hey, this is the most interesting
parallel in this show. Now it beats the parallel to us.
But so we talked a little bit about, um, you

(41:47):
know this, okay, If this communism stuff is a myth, right,
if in practice there aren't wild inequalities in North Korean society,
then why what what's system in place does this? It's
the song bone system and I may be pronouncing that incorrectly,
but it's the caste system that exists in North Korea, yep.

(42:10):
And they're they're like three grades, right, yeah, three tiers.
You've got the loyal, which is also called core or
I think it's called core, but loyal, the loyal Core.
Then you've also got wavering, which are people that are
kind of your ifs, your maybe's, you're these people are
on a list, but they're not necessarily danger yet. Then

(42:32):
you've got your hostiles. Ah, yes, this is this system
is based upon the position of one's family pre liberation
of the peninsula. So the hostile and wavering class makes
up about seventy two per cent of the population, and

(42:53):
there are gradients of this, I think more than thirty
kind of gradients. One thing we should point out here
is that this most definitely affects your chances at everything
the town in which you are assigned to live, right,
the job you are allowed to have, how far you
are allowed to advance at school, Because if you are

(43:14):
um in the wrong class, no matter how well, if
you're in the hostile class, you probably don't get to
go to school. You're in a labor camp somewhere. But
if you were in a wavering class, no matter how
you study, you will not get the academic accolades that
the uh that the top tier classes get. Another myth
about North Korea that it is a failed state. It

(43:37):
is not. Actually things are better, at least a lot
better than they were in the nineties for sure. That's
when you had the starvation. Um just it wasn't looking
good around that time. So things are improving, and there
are a lot of things that are improving, right, Uh, yeah,
there are. In terms of access to food, things are proving.

(44:00):
There was a huge reevaluation of the Okay, this is
this kind of complex, but there was this huge reevaluation
reevaluation of the currency when the black market became too
successful and people relying less on the Kim dynasty. Uh
So people lost their savings totally and have been recovering

(44:24):
from that. But the the black or gray market has
to be permitted to a certain amount to a certain amount.
So that might be one reason why people say it's
a failed state. But a failed state is something like
Somalia when when the president that the U n recognizes
barely controls part of the capital, you know what I mean.

(44:47):
So the government in North Korea definitely still is in
control of the country, and that might be That might
be a good thing. As we'll see, it's also not
as isolated as you might believe. We've got a great
quote here of from the Atlantic that will just read
a little part of the United States may have very
little to do with the North North Korea, but that

(45:07):
does not apply to the rest of the world. Did
you know that North Korea sends hundreds of students overseas
for educational and business training. Thousands of North Korean's work
in China and Mongolia, where they produce goods for popular
British clothing brands, in Kuwait where they work on construction projects,
and in Russia, where they labor in logging camps. He

(45:28):
also says that there's a North Korean construction company that's
working completing a museum near Cambodia's famed Ankoor temples, which
is a whole another awesome place. Yeah, there's also a
I T sector that is becoming an outsourcing destination. Uh,
they've got a pretty advanced animation industry. So this this

(45:52):
is all to say that this is not really a
This is not someplace that is completely cut off from
the world, which is something that people are often taught
in the United States. And this, all these myths is
just the tip of the iceberg. So Matt, let's get
to the good stuff. Are there any conspiracies about North Korea? Oh? Yes, Ben,

(46:13):
there are a lot of conspiracies that deal with the
dprk uh. One of the big ones is that inside
the country in North Korea, Americans are blamed for everything.
Oh so, like a power failure, Oh yeah, power failure,
you spilled your t Americans, It was the Americans. Obama.

(46:35):
I think it would be really funny if there were
just whole families in North Korea that just scream Obama
the way certain people in South too when anything happens. Well,
certain people across the world, Okay, sure saying that out
of personal experience. Okay, I'm but I'm sure they're German

(46:57):
officials who say Obama. I know there's at least one
guy in Russia who's probably saying that a lot. Sure, yeah,
I think we know who. But the but where does
this where does this idea come from? This idea that, uh,
the US forces are continually oppressing uh, North Korea. Well,

(47:17):
we do know that a lot of it is based
on the factual events of the Korean War. Um, when
the Americans were doing a lot of uh, I mean,
it was total warfare, so a lot of civilian soldiers
died and the country was raised, the buildings were knocked down,
and not only that, the sanctions that are placed on

(47:38):
North Korea. Yeah, but those sanctions primarily just affect the elite.
It's not as if, um, people in rural farming or
mining towns are saying, oh man, we can't get cigars anymore.
And the elite are people too, and they knew and
there you know cigars. You're right, I am being I'm

(47:58):
I'm being rude to the elite. Uh. So there's this
other there's this other theory here, um that if you
believe in new World order theories, you may also believe
in this that like Libya and Iran, North Korea is
on the global UM let's call it the stuff list,
because it refuses to play games with the it refuses

(48:20):
to play ball rather with the global financial regime. I
m F. Will Bank Goldman Sachs. I don't know, man,
This this one feels very real to me, that so
called non aligned countries. There's another. There's another one that
comes from a guy you might remember from earlier episodes
we had, Yeah, Benjamin Fulford. We we mentioned him, I

(48:42):
think when we were what was it, we were doing
the Dragon Family episode. We looked at his research a lot. Uh.
He believes that DPRK and Japan are working closely together,
and he's basing this on Kim John UN's Japanese mother.
That's you know, that's kind of a big deal. And
also the large population in North Korean descendants who reside

(49:06):
in Japan. Yeah, Benjamin Fulford, you can you can check
out his some of his work online if you like.
I would say that, uh, I would say that while
the stories are interesting, they are allegations yes, they are
not proven facts, which is something you check out. But
the Dragon Family episode that we did is just fascinating. Um.

(49:31):
That's the one about the huge amounts of it wasn't money,
it was bonds, yeah, certificates yeah, and uh and there's
some interesting that they're interesting is a word that I'm
overusing this podcast. So I would say that there's some
um tantalizing stuff to go along with that. Around the

(49:54):
same time of two Japanese nationals caught uh smuggling a
large amount of bills and a train supposed hidden treasure
or recover treasure in the Philippines. Uh. Dating back to
World Wars. The Dragon Family is this sort of um
asiatic ruling force similar to the Western concept of the illuminati.

(50:18):
And this is about his thing is about these two
groups in conflict. Um. But do check it out if
you get a chance. Another big conspiracy. North Korea as
a world ending threat, Uh, not as much as a
way in the way that you think. Now. North Korea
is most dangerous to South Korea because it is so
close to the capital city Soul. Also, as a million

(50:39):
strong army, it would be able to do some devastating,
horrible damage to South Korea. But it would by no
means when the war. It doesn't have the firepower to UM.
It is not a world threat other than the idea
that destabilization UM or an attack on with Greek it's

(51:00):
set off a domino effect of some sort. And we
said earlier that there are an estimated to nuclear warheads
inside the country in North Korea, So I guess they
are considered a nuclear power because they have these two.
It's the threat is much smaller than a lot of places,
though you can't underestimate a nuke no matter what the size.

(51:21):
It also doesn't have a lot of missiles. You you
were telling me about the newest missile. I don't know
how to say that. Uha too, yeah you n h ah.
This technically is not a missile. It's a space launch vehicle.
I hope you guys can my air quotes around that. Uh.
And it did put a satellite in orbit. Uh. Currently,

(51:42):
the US sources estimate that North Korea has deployed around
six hundred SCUDG missile variants two hundred rodong missiles of
fewer than fifty musudan or Taypo dong um, but South
Korean sources estimated and viewers, so this varies. So here's
the big question that we have today, what is the

(52:05):
future of North Korea? Can we can we see anything
like what is the outcome here? Well, to answer that,
we'd also be answering this another question which we'll we'll
answer in full in an upcoming episode two. Uh. The
future of North Korea is difficult to determine because it

(52:29):
is caught between global powers the United States, China, Japan, Russia.
To a lesser degree, a lot of misinformation and disinformation
is spread about the country, and its inner politics are
incredibly secretive. But those human rights abuses are real to
some degree. Oh absolutely. And if you know, if we're

(52:52):
still going to ho about freedom and human rights in America,
then why the heck haven't we done anything about this?
We are the largest superpower and military might in the world. Furthermore,
if China has such influence over DPRK, then why hasn't
it done more to improve the the economic situation, if

(53:14):
not the human rights situation. Well, there's a simple answer.
There's not a compelling reason to change the status quo
right now in that region. Absolutely, imagine, if imagine, if
you can, the situation when the wall fell in between
East Germany and West Germany. This would be that in

(53:35):
a much larger circumstance, a massive flood of refugees would
UH would move into South Korea and China immediately in
excess of twenty million people. UH. And and who knows
which way the power shifts if that wall comes down?
Is it the Republic of Korea or the Democratic Republic
of Korea who gains control? Right? Yeah, so does the

(53:59):
does the current collapse or does it become something that
gives the United States more influence or is it something
that gives China an edge? And you have to think
that some kind of sudden military intervention would would pretty
much it would certainly result in the deaths of millions
on the r OK side, just because the DPRK is

(54:21):
so ready to attack. They've been planning for some kind
of invasion or aggression for years, decades, and listeners, the
cynics among us would say that uh in invasion or
liberation has not occurred yet because the DPRK doesn't have
a valuable resource like oil or something. That's why it's

(54:44):
not officially a protectorate of China yet. But it does
have mineral resources Metal resources, will see how that goes.
We also know that a CIA style people's revolution or
regime change at China's doors step would be an act
of clear war, and that's probably one of the reasons

(55:04):
it hasn't happened yet. Uh, they're spies from China active
in North Korea and their North Korean spies in China
and South Korea. But for now, there's not a compelling
reason for the country's involved to change the status quo immediately,
maybe slowly over time, but not immediately. So what do

(55:25):
you guys think about all this stuff? What's your opinion?
We I don't know. This is one of those subjects
that racks my brain because it's very tough to digest
all of these things, like the human rights abuses that
we talked about, and also the rock and hard place
between changing something and then not making things worse from
a global perspective. We'd love to hear what you think,

(55:48):
so right to us. Go to Twitter, We're at conspiracy
stuff there. Find us on Facebook, We're conspiracy stuff there.
And that's the end of this classic episode. If you
have any thoughts or questions about this episode, you can
get into contact with us in a number of different ways.
One of the best is to give us a call.
Our number is one eight three three std w y

(56:10):
t K. If you don't want to do that, you
can send us a good old fashioned email. We are
conspiracy at i heart radio dot com. Stuff they don't
want you to know is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.