Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 65 - Joseph Dresnok

Episode Date: August 26, 2019

Joseph Dresnok was a Private in the US Army stationed along the Korean DMZ. He quickly became depressed and developed one hell of an addiction to booze and sex workers. After getting in trouble one too many times and fearing he would get a courts martial, he took off running across the DMZ towards North Korea. Support the show and get bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys buy a shirt: https://teespring.com/stores/lions-led-by-donkeys-store Sources: "Crossing the Line" BBC 4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yd2dCk3N8cE https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/08/21/a-u-s-soldier-who-defected-to-north-korea-in-1962-has-died-his-pyongyang-born-sons-say/ Jenkins Robert. The Reluctant Communist: My Desertion, Court-Martial, and Forty-Year Imprisonment in North Korea. 2007. https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/04/29/meet-the-four-americans-who-defected-to-north-korea-in-the-1960s/

These were people that were golden gifts to the North Koreans. By blowing them up as if these were people who saw the light and wanted to live under the mantle of Kim Il-sung's leadership, the U.S. government, I think, was very sensitive about this. They did not want publicity on these guys, and they still don't. I mean, I don't think now it's a conscious thing, but in the 60s, I think it was quite conscious to play down and hide these defections because they were more embarrassing to the United States than

you might think. We could hear the loudspeakers with Dresdnov talking. It was absolutely appalling that he would do this and turn on the whole United States Army. Good morning, 8th and 9th Cav. Come over to North Korea, we'll give you everything. We'll give you money, we'll give you women, you'll have everything. Every day or every week, we would hear him.

He was telling us, you know, he had a lot of girls, you know, and they were treating him like Raleigh. We knew it was lies. But the younger kids that just got out of basic and they were 18 really took it for heart. And we were afraid that some of them might actually say, hey, this is a good life. Let's go over. Would you ever go to like North Korea for a vacation? No. Why not?

Because that one guy that did got like beaten to death. Oh, Otto Warmbier, which I was like 100% sure that was a fake last name because he's like in a frat too. It's like, yeah, it's auto warm beer, bro. Yeah, he died. Yeah. Which this is a bad cold open, but this is the lines led by donkeys podcast. I'm your host, Joe. And join joining me today is rich.

Hello. Hello. For people who are unaware. Nick is convalescing from a exploded leg. He broke his femur and dislocated his ankle. Tell them how he did that, Joe. Bad things. I broke his leg.

Joseph himself broke Nick's leg. I did. It was a consensual thing. It's not like I assaulted him. I consensually broke his leg. sensual thing it's not like i assaulted him i consensually broke his leg uh and yeah this is normally the part where i would direct people to a gofundme or something so nick doesn't go into hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical debt but we have uh wonderful socialized military health care and he will not pay a cent parts of being in the army There are a few but they are big

It's something all Americans should have So and thankfully The Lions Led by Donkeys podcast has a very Gracious benefits Program and so He Has all of the vacation that He needs to heal

He gets convalescent leave His medical care will be taken care of All I get is pizza. This time I gave you a copious amount of Old Crow because we're pouring one out for Nick. In his glass. Sorry, Nick. It's only right.

It's the people's glass, really. It belongs to the Legion. No, it's literally his. It was bought as a gift for him from Iceland. He keeps it in our house. So the reason why I asked you if you would ever go on a vacation to North Korea is because what if I told you that an American soldier once escaped North Korea in the 1950s and became a movie star? A North Korean movie star? Yes.

They allow movies? Yes, kind of. We're going to talk about somebody today who's always been an interest to me his name is Joseph James Dresnick the reason why he's always been very interesting to me is because he is most likely the only American man who has lived through all three Kims of North Korea. And he died there. We'll get to that point. He never came home.

So he should have been a very interesting story to tell, but he clearly was never allowed to tell it. And we'll kind of talk about him today. And also the various people that he horribly victimized while he was in North Korea. I knew there was a catch. That's why our tagline has kind of become, wait, it gets worse. So Joseph Dresnick, he also sometimes strangely goes by James or John, which is kind of weird because that means we have the same name. Also, my name is Joseph John Kasabian.

Neither of those are nicknames for Joseph. James or John? No, it's just Joe. Joe, Joey. Jojo. Jojo. I got Josephine a lot when I was a kid. So Dreznik was born in November 24th, 1941

and raised in Richmond, Virginia. He was born to an incredibly poor family who routinely got in knock-down, drag-out fights. And they would do that in front of their children. His father, in particular, was, what else? A violent drunk who'd get blackout and then beat the shit out of the entire family. Ooh, fun.

Yeah, yeah. It's like the origin story for every private in the army ever. Eventually, Dresnick's mother had enough and finally escaped the brutal relationship when Joseph was about 10 years old. So good for Mother Dresnick. That's enough time to do some damage, though. Yeah. Not many abused spouses are able to escape their abusers and combine that with the culture of the 19 fucking fifties in America. That was one hell of an accomplishment.

That is the last nice thing I'll have to say about his mother. Uh, she grabbed young Joseph and began driving aimlessly in whichever direction, uh, because the family was now essentially homeless. This meant that Joseph and his siblings were not attending school while their mother became a sex worker to afford the little comforts the family had. I'm not blaming her for that.

That's not one of the mean things I have to say about her. She had to do what she had to do. I assume the small comforts they had were gas for their car and maybe a little bit of food. Unfortunately for Joseph and his siblings, his mother's new life eventually caught up with her and she began to spend whatever night she was not working in bars, getting drunk and using drugs. Yeah, that's yeah that's a rough life yeah i mean it's a hard life

i mean imagine i mean being a sex worker in 2019 is pretty is a pretty brutal existence i can't imagine what it was like in the 1950s like how do you unwind from that uh you don't drinking in bars and doing drugs you just destroy yourself yeah uh. Same thing for podcasters, really. Drug use and heavy alcohol. I don't like that comparison. As we drink from our incredibly large glasses full of bourbon. So while she was doing that,

she would leave her children alone in her car the whole time. So they would just kind of sit there. Why are they in the car? Leave them at home. They have no home. The car is the home. At some point, the family reached Atlanta, Georgia,

where Joseph's father managed to finally track them down. Their father managed to get the courts to take custody away from their mother, which would have been easy anyway, I think, in the 50s, even if she wasn't an alcoholic. Yeah, the courts hate sex workers. I mean, even a single mom in the 50s is kind of like't an alcoholic. Yeah the courts hate sex workers. I mean even a single mom in the 50s is kind of like woof. Yeah that's true.

If you strip everything away and just leave her as a single mother like that's not going good for her. All women in general are just emotional and irrational and unstable so. Definitely. Crazy. Just put the gun down. You don't need to do this. It's not a gun. It's a very

it's our podcast machete um now the problem was he won custody but he didn't want the kids either he just kind of wanted to stick it to his wife who escaped his his grasp a couple years earlier sounds about like a 1950s father i i assume this is where this all ended in a murder suicide but uh it doesn't uh instead he hand them off to relatives to take care of this split the Dresnick brothers up for the first time as Joseph went to go live with his aunt

and his brother went to go live with an uncle now if you think this meant Joseph finally found a loving or caring home you must be new to our show hello it gets worse his aunt made it very clear that she hated the idea of taking care of Joseph wanted him gone as soon as she could find a way to get rid of him. Then why even take him in?

I don't know. Maybe because, like, she didn't want him to be homeless or was hoping that his dad would eventually come back. I don't know. Joseph finally just sick of the adults and constantly fucking his life over decided to run away uh it was when he was when he was caught and brought back home he would just run away again after a few times his aunt dumped joseph back at his father's house saying that she simply couldn't do it anymore not that she was doing anything in the first place uh his dad was had already remarried you see see, Joseph's brother had returned home

from the uncle's house. And Joseph's dad lied to his new wife, saying that he only had one kid. What? Fuck, that sucks. So, like, obviously he can't have this other, like, by the way, I have this other kid. He can't have Joseph hanging around. So Joseph's dad loaded him up

in the car, and after telling him they were going to visit an out-of-town relative, drove a couple towns over and dumped him on the side of the street holy shit yeah this effectively meaning young joseph an orphan uh this this is like the trick that you and he's how old at this point uh not even a teenager i don't think uh maybe like 13 um but like that's that's a trick you use on a kid to get him to go to the dentist like yeah we're we're going to the video game store or is that just me definitely just you yeah my my mom was like we're gonna go to the zoo i'm like hell yeah because i fucking love the zoo no my mom just always told us we were going to the dentist joe uh when so funny story when uh

i when i was really young i had a cavity and i had a bad experience at the dentist because like they didn't give me enough Novocaine or whatever and I felt the entire fucking thing no matter how much I yelled and screamed they totally thought I was faking it or they just didn't care so like after that to get me to go to the dentist you had to lie

because I would literally run away from home to escape the dentist and how long has it been since you've been to the dentist now Joe since the army made me go since you've been to the dentist now, Joe? Since the army made me go. And I've been on the army since 2013. I don't know when you're going to be listening to this episode, but it has been far, far too long. Now it's

the sunk cost fallacy of like, I just don't want to know. Not good. It's not the way you're supposed to go about living your life. Yeah. So now that Joseph was an orphan orphan he was not sure what to do so he uh attempted to steal a bike which immediately got him arrested uh i'm walking sucks why not steal a bike uh instead of being sent to juvie he was sent to live at the over street children's home which is a foster home uh it's like a group foster home ran by a pastor that children nicknamed Big Papa.

Yeah. That's foreboding. It's actually not. This is where I normally just make a notorious B.I.G. joke, but like Big Papa was the most stable

father character that Dreznik would ever have. Oh, that's nice. Not counting the Kim family, I guess. And it was here at the foster home of all places,

which I don't know about you, but I've never heard anything good about a foster home except like, you're not dead. It could be worse. I mean,

they typically have shelter? Yeah, and you'll be fed. Maybe. Hopefully. At least there'll be kids smaller than you in which you could steal from.

Maybe. I don't know know unless you're the smallest um so he finally had what could be considered a normal life for him now the problem was his shitty parents kept him out of school for so long he had very few opportunities for him he was behind his peers in every subject in school to the point that Joseph himself claims at this point he was illiterate. Though, here's a strange thing. Joseph Dresnick is actually a very

bad source of information about Joseph Dresnick. He has been known to lie and make his life before he got the North Creosan much worse for propaganda purposes. Now, the reason why i don't buy the fact he was actually illiterate is because he was around 17 now and he enlisted in the u.s army you can't enlist in the u.s army if you're illiterate this isn't the 1800s or project 100 000 but they were going to vietnam not quite yet. Oh, not yet? Yeah. Now, we had advisors in Vietnam,

but this is before Project 100,000 kicked off that would have allowed an illiterate version of Joseph Dresnick to enlist or draft. He may have been somewhat illiterate. He was definitely behind. But could still sign his name and stuff? He was absolutely behind everybody else. I don't buy he was illiterate i think um the claim of illiteracy came up

relatively recently uh in a documentary i used for my main source in this article um was that he was talking about how he likes to thank north korea for giving him an education and that may be true. I do buy that. But he also teaches... Well, at the end of his life, he taught English to North Koreans. I'm willing to bet he didn't start from zero. Yeah, probably not. Yeah.

And again, this is before Project 100,000. If it was mid-60s, yeah, absolutely. He'd be fine. He'd be good to go. But he also would have gone to vietnam instead of south korea so uh joseph like a lot of people in this situation thought the army was a good way to travel and actually have something that resembled a career because he had not graduated from high school he didn't even have a ged so like there wasn't anything else out there for him it turned out that joseph hated the army You see, after pretty much his entire life of not having anybody tell him to do, you know, his dad's pretty abusive.

His mom was neglectful, but he never had anybody like telling him what to do. He didn't have parents. So like for the first time in his life, his parents become drill sergeants and NCOs and officers and shit. And he fucking hates it. He wasn't exactly down with getting yelled at and being ordered around so he decided that the army sucks and now instead he wanted a normal life with a wife and kids so like any dumb teenager who enlists in the army he took leave went back to his hometown and married the first person that'd say yes to him oh yay a tale as old as time tale as old as time uh after which the army sent him to Western Germany, which at the time was actually just West Germany,

where his wife could not follow him. See, at the time, West Germany was considered kind of a hardship duty station, kind of like Korea was a few years ago. You couldn't bring your family because the Soviets might be storming over the Fulda Gap at any time. A war was a vague possibility so they

technically a hardship toward very few people actually bring their families it's just an option now i know a lot oh you're talking about korea yeah okay yeah like germany fucking hell yeah no sorry germany's a shit i loved it um grant grant i didn't have a wife to bring with me but i know a lot of people who did um anyone who knows anyone in the military knows how this story ends. She merely cheats on him and sends him a letter saying that she found a new love and they were getting a divorce. Oh, no. That's why you got to marry the fat chick. Shit.

Despite Dresnick saying, I'm going to move right past that because I feel like I don't have the agency to continue that joke. Despite Dresnick saying that he was always faithful to his wife, soldiers that serve alongside of him said that he had one hell of a sex addiction that he would feed through West German prostitutes. Good way to feed it. And I believe that because he always noted he was very, very broke. So it's like, hmm, I wonder where your money was going. he was very, very broke. So it's like, hmm, I wonder where your money was going. After burning through his entire salary in one marriage,

he decided he would simply re-enlist in the army because he had nothing else going for him. Again, a tale as old as time. Just army stuff. This just sounds like your average private. Yeah, pretty much. That's why I like this story so much. Nothing about Joseph Dresnick is different until what happened to him.

He was sent to South Korea in 1962, where he was stationed along the Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ, along the border of North and South Korea. Now, there's a lot of people listening to this who have probably been stationed in Korea. Korea was a lot different then than Korea is now. Korea was a lot different then than Korea is now. The Korean War had been over for almost a decade, but firefights in the DMZ were almost a daily occurrence, and numerous American soldiers were killed and wounded on both sides. It was almost like Afghanistan is now, just without all the airstrikes.

You would hear once a month that someone would be killed at the DMZ. And much like now, nobody really gave a shit. I thought people used to care about the wars. No, no, no, no. It depends how close are we to an election cycle?

And, and what sports ball game is on TV? So a Dresnick eventually fell into a deep depression and attempted to cure it with booze and hookers. I mean, how do you cure your depression? Yeah, sure. I know. They took down the sex worker listing on Craigslist, and ever since, I've just been lost. You can't sell live animals anymore, either.

Craigslist is really no fucking fun anymore. Yeah, bastards. Once you get a couple serial killers coming at you, it takes all the fun out of everything. Like, what the fuck? I don't know what Twitter's waiting for. You have people threatening nuclear war through their fucking app all the time and nobody's done shit.

Now, as you can imagine, this crippling substance abuse problem is not a good cure for mental illness. At one point, he forged his serge abuse problem is not a good cure for mental illness. At one point, he forged his sergeant's signature on a pass form so he could go see one of his favorite girls out in town. Ooh, I've seen somebody get kicked out of the army for forging their sergeant's signature for some... Different time. Not even a pass form. It was for a fucking maintenance.

Like a, you know, the 5988? You get kicked out? That's like the dumbest way to get kicked out at least your drugs jesus christ no they forged a sergeant's signature on a maintenance form i mean it is forging an official uh official paperwork yeah i just don't think they liked her but sure yeah i mean that's that's i think that's a felony forging government paperwork probably but um i mean this is a pass, so it's not super official. I would say a pass is way worse than a maintenance document. I guess.

I know pass forms are way before my time. Especially in another country. Yeah. Well, this is like back in the day where you actually needed a pass form just to leave base. Yeah. So I don't even know what that world's like. Now, it came pretty clear to everybody that looked at this thing it wasn't real because remember dresnick was barely literate at best so he probably couldn't forge

paperwork could very well oh it's like the dude who tried to forge his quarter slip but wrote 10 days quarters or some stupid shit that the doctor would have never written quarters with a z well they always write it in hours and you can't get more than 72 hours. Yeah, anything F is like convalescent leave. Yeah, so 10 days of quarters from going to sick call for pink eye probably wouldn't fly. That's just from bare ass farting on each other's pillows.

Getting struck down with pink eye is such a fucking barracks way to get quarters too. I'm like 80 certain that these two guys gave it to each other just so they could go to sick hall and get quarters bro bro did you just shit on my pillow because they both went to sick hall together for the same thing oh man that's either like a really weird 69 gone wrong or people are shitting on each other's pillows and being as a man who lived in the barracks i know which one it was it was the

69 uh yeah i have a lot of experience with that do you uh what happens in the barracks stays in the barracks i honestly wouldn't wouldn't uh disregard either scenarios they're both equally possible uh now like i said it was pretty easy for everybody to notice that Dreznik had forged his sergeant's signature. And when his commander confronted him about it, Dreznik showed his pass again, saying like, no, no, I have a pass. You can't stop me. And the commander figured out pretty fast that he was lying, mostly because Dreznik spelled his sergeant's name wrong. Yeah. You know, you get a pass on that if your last name is, say, Kasabian.

Nobody's ever spelled your last name right. We wear fucking name tapes. I'm pretty sure they did back then, too. Yeah, but if you're just gonna pull out of your ass, like, you're gonna forget an S or something. I mean, I guess. But, like, it was like, his name was, like, Carver. You spelled

it with a K, you stupid fuck. I mean, if I'm looking at your name every single day i'm probably gonna know how to spell it you'd hope so um now the commander didn't do anything at that very moment instead he told dresnick to be at his office at 3 p.m now uh the commander had a his his idea was to like kind of ambush him with uh courts martial paperwork uh so he couldn't you know run off or whatever well dresden kind of had a feeling that the jig was up and that was when and everybody was at lunch around noon he snuck out and broad fucking daylight began walking towards north korea now uh for people who are unaware the dmz is like one of the most heavily landmined areas in the

fucking world like hundreds of thousands if not millions of landmines line the dmz and they have been there for decades uh he managed to walk across the most heavily militarized area in the world at the time maybe except the ber Berlin Divide. Now that I'm talking then, not now. Now I'm pretty sure it's a DMZ or any square inch of Syria. He simply walked across it, managing to not trigger one of these landmines

or get fucking shot on sight because remember, gunfire all the time. And then he was taken captive at gunpoint by North Korean soldiers. Now Dresnick said it was around this time he assumed he was going to be shot and immediately began to regret his decision but but instead dresnik was brought back to the soldiers barracks where he willingly told them everything that they wanted to know to save his own life oh so he wasn't a trained in

seer 100 or whatever that shitty oh I'm pretty sure that even exists. Now, they didn't get any fucking useful information out of him because after all these years, Dresnick was only a private. So they chucked him in a room to deal with him later. To Dresnick's surprise, he's woken by a man speaking English saying, quote, Hey, Dresnick, I'm Abshir. Because there is actually another American soldier there. It turns out that Dresnok was not alone, and he was not the only American soldier in North Korea. Which is weird, because you think he would have heard about someone walking across earlier, but he says he never did.

So the other guy walked off, too? Yeah. Yeah, the army fucking sucks, man. It has to really suck. Now, I'm showing my ass here, because I continually make jokes about north korea at the time north korea was much better off than south korea uh south korea is pretty well devastated by the war and so is north korea but the main difference being the soviet

union and china just pretty much poured endless amounts of money and food into north korea and uh just pretty much made it a puppet regime for the most part. I mean, the Soviet Union chose Kim Il-sung to lead North Korea. He wasn't actually some wonderful revolutionary leader like a lot of people say he was. I heard that he invented

McDonald's. No, that was Kim Jong that was Kim Il-sung inventing the hamburger. Hamburger, that's what I meant. And that may have actually been his son i don't remember which one um but yeah they were not self-sustaining even though that's like their whole thing the juche ideology of self-sustainment but uh they were built up while we were doing much of the same thing in south korea we also had the vietnam war going on so we were a lot more distracted in where our money was going. And South

Korea had their own dictator who was attempting to build brutal capitalism in its place. They could not have been more alike and more different at the same time in North and South Korea. But Larry Allen Absheer was a soldier who got

caught smoking weed on the DMZ. Apparently there's a soldier who had got caught smoking weed on the DMZ. Uh, apparently there's a ton of free growing weed on the DMZ and he just smoked some of it. Uh, which I'm shocked it doesn't happen in Afghanistan more. Right.

Um, and afraid of facing repercussions after he was caught, he simply ran across the DMZ. Imagine how terrifying that is when you're high as fuck. Or maybe not. Yeah, that's how he didn't step on a landmine. It's like a drunk driver always surviving a car accident. Maybe it's like the opposite of terrifying.

Maybe he felt free. Yeah, and he was so loose on his feet, he even triggered landmines. What up, little bomb bro? They would actually end up being joined by two other American soldiers, Jerry Wayne Parrish and another man who saw North Korean propaganda uh they would actually end up being uh joined by two other american soldiers jerry wayne parish and another man who saw north korean propaganda promising huge amounts of money to defect with as many weapons as they could carry charles robert jenkins who ran across the border with his rifle just one yeah well just as m14 good fucking job dude yeah and also now your money's worthless

because you're in north korea group of Americans, the North Koreans, had a wonderful piece of propaganda. They would use these men to show how terrible South Korean America must have been if these men were willing to risk death in order to escape to North Korea. Though it may be said during this time that North Korea really was much better off than South Korea, like I

just explained. And for a lot of these guys, North Korea sounded a lot better than the options they had at home uh 60s america was pretty pretty fucked up place no shit you know all these dudes were white so it could be worse you know if like a whole bunch of black soldiers were just like fuck this shit and ran to north korea because like i'm either gonna go to vietnam i'm gonna go to jim crow america like I get it. It's probably better. Of the American defectors, Joseph Dresnack showed himself to be the most willing to work with the North Koreans.

Dresnack taught the North Koreans about America's dark past regarding slavery and the lack of civil rights at the time, as well as how you could be a very, very hard worker and still end up homeless. Thank God those two things are taken care of, right? That doesn't happen anymore. I think that's one of my favorite things that always comes up is like, because North Korea is a fucking goddamn hellscape. And it's like the closest thing to like a cartoonish dystopian government you could possibly imagine. But like even then when they hit back on their propaganda, you have to be like,

Ooh, they got us if you look deeply at america's government it's pretty cartoonish oh yeah and not to mention like making or like using america's history as propaganda against america is like the most low-hanging fruit on earth like we're just a nation whose entire foundation is built on like bloodshed and the slavery of everything around us and now when we've ran and we legally can't own slaves anymore now we just have debt yeah debt and also legal slaves oh yeah yeah a the prison industrial conflict oh don't worry they got around that pesky little constitutional amendment by paying them 50 cents an hour actually i think that is too high i think it's like 25 cents i think it

just depends on where they are but yeah yeah when i was uh fighting wildfires in oregon they uh the prisoners i think the inmates got paid like a dollar a day or something stupid like that yeah maybe it was more i don't remember but i gave them cigarettes yeah for getting job skills that they'll literally never be able to use because they're felons. Yeah, you can't be a wildland firefighter if you're a felon. And the prison guards from California kept yelling at us for giving them food and cigarettes. So eat my dick, guys. I did anyway. So another thing that Joseph did, and the other Americans say that he was absolutely not compelled to do it.

He simply said he would was broadcast propaganda in English across the DMZ targeted towards other American soldiers to defect and telling them they would be treated like kings. Now, as you can imagine, this is not true. Was he being treated like a king? Absolutely not. The four men were deeply distrusted by the north koreans are not allowed to go anywhere unsupervised the north korean people after being told for years that americans are bloodthirsty devils didn't want to go anywhere fucking near these guys because like remember this is the people that serve

they're alive in north korea at this point vividly remember the Korean War. So they're like, fuck those guys. To make matters worse, the Americans are not allowed to freely interact with anybody nor marry a North Korean woman. As soon as it became very clear, none of them would be allowed to have anything resembling a normal life. So the four men get in to plan an escape. Because they

remember they wanted to get away from the army because the army sucks. They're like,'re like oh fuck this the army's a prison they're like oh god we're in another prison we can't do anything surprise who would have thought escaping North Korea was a bad idea guys in 1966 the men all ran into the Soviet embassy in

Pyongyang and asked them for help see they picked the Soviets because and this is what Dross of Dresnik and Larry Absher Bull said, because they were white and they would help them. Wow. Yeah. The Soviets, of course, immediately turned the men back over to the North Koreans. Like, yep, out you go.

Yeet. Now, you're probably thinking this is they all get the shit tortured out of them, right? But you look like me. You can't hate me i'm white uh you know that's some shit that only white guys would do like please help me look we're the same a funny story about that uh i used to help instruct the basic officer armor leadership course and uh in fort knox kentucky before they moved at all and uh we had uh foreign lieutenants come in for the tank course and stuff and one of them was from turkey and uh he sat down in my humvee and he wanted me to get him some supplies that they were not allowed to have which is like nicotine and stuff like that uh because quote you look like me i'm armenian i don't really get along great with a lot of guys in the turkish army uh because it's

kind of like hyper nationalist kind of like ours and they're they subscribe to the the genocide never happened narrative so i was like i'm armenian and then he quickly get out of my humvee uh so instead of getting the shit tortured out of them, which is what I assumed would happen, like, oh man, this is where they all get worked over with clubs and shit. That didn't happen. The North Koreans actually felt guilty

that they have driven their American guests away. Like, aw. You don't like me? Just imagine Kim Il-sung sitting around like, I thought we were friends. What about all the good times we had doing everything that I wanted to do? We played basketball.

And Larry, I let you borrow my DVDs. It was then that the North Koreans thought it'd be a good idea to teach the men Korean and to learn the ways of Korean culture so they could assimilate. Kind of. It's so they could assimilate. Kind of. It's like the halfway assimilation. Now, they would be forced to live separately from North Koreans, but the government now

made sure they were supplied with anything they wanted to keep them happy, and they'd be allowed into the cities with supervision, of course. Can't have those goddamn pale faces wandering around Pyongyang. Can they date? Kind of. What do you mean kind of? North Koreans were still off limits. So who can they date?

Even though North Korea likes to act like super workers of the world unite communist type, they're actually like hyper racists. And they absolutely did not want North Korean women going anywhere near the American men. That doesn't surprise me at all. Were there like Soviets there and stuff? Kind of.

Mostly Soviet men. There was like Soviet embassy workers, military advisors, stuff like that. This effectively made their everyday life into something akin to a permanent vacation. They want booze? They're going to get booze. They want cigarettes? They'll get cigarettes. you want to go to some beachside resort cool take the fucking

government minder with you like they were on permanent vacation they didn't have fucking jobs they didn't have any worries well shit I'm in right yeah like that that's what that's how you got these guys to be on your side uh they never had to work or worry about a fucking

thing everything was given to them and they even had assigned drivers that would bring them anywhere they wanted to go inside pyongyang because they couldn't they didn't want them like looking outside the capital it's kind of like if you go to north korea today even though american citizens are now barred from north korea but question yeah are the beaches in pyongyang warm i don't think there's any beaches in pyongyang it's an inland city. It's near the DMZ. But they do have seaside resorts and shit in other

parts of North Korea. Nowadays, they even actually have a ski resort. Is it warm enough to swim, unlike Washington? Krug is pretty goddamn hot. Yeah. Alright. Alright. I'm down. According to Dresnick, the men sat around drinking, chain-sm smoking, and gambling their days away.

In comparison to how Dresnick was treated by the army after fucking up, the North Koreans only generated more trust and confidence into him. The other guys really didn't buy in. The same could not be said for Jenkins. Jenkins felt he was in a prison and attempted to take charge of the group of Americans since he

technically outranked them all. He was a serge sergeant i don't think that matters here dude right uh like any other sergeant uh nobody could break it to him nobody gave a fuck um are you sure he wasn't a corporal that sounds very corporally to me he's not you know he was a e5 yeah and everybody else i believe was a private uh jenkins attempted to get them in to start organizing another escape. Guys, you have to listen to me. I'm a sergeant. Fuck you. You're not the dear leader.

You're not my dad. Now, Dresnick was far and away from the U.S. Army and all the pains of his home life. The last thing he wanted was to let Jenkins boss him around. Not that he had a new daddy in Kimmel's song. He didn't have to listen to no fucking sergeant in the army. So he beat the shit out of him.

Dresnick was far and away much larger than everybody else around him. Like Dresnick was about my size. Yeah. He's about six, three, mid 200 pounds. He's a big boy and even bigger towards the end of his life, because remember, he's on a permanent vacation

for about 50 years. The schism formed between the group of men, with the three of them on one side, on Jenkins' side, and Dresnick on the other. In 1978, the men were fluent in Korean and had been given Korean citizenship,

which brings us to Kim Jong-il. Kim had a bit of an obsession with filmmaking. He would famously go on to kidnap a Japanese director and force him to make a Korean Godzilla knockoff called Polgasari, which led to a high-speed getaway, I believe, in Thailand. It's a really weird story.

But he also wrote books on filmmaking, one of which is actually considered pretty goddamn good for film aficionados. Kim Jong-il wrote a book? Yeah. Oh. He's Kim 2, if you're keeping track now. Kim Il-sung is the OG Kim. We're now on his son, Kim Jong-il.

Who is Kim Jong-un's dad, right? Yes. Okay. Along with the other Kim who got murdered via a nerve agent in the airport. By his brother. Ordered by his brother, carried out by sex workers. Oh, I didn't know the sex worker thing. Now, it's largely accepted that they were sex workers acting as models.

They were hired, if you believe their story, which I actually do, that they were told that they were on a reality TV show as models. And they had to run around. And it was a practical joke that they were to rub this cloth covered in a bad-smelling substance on somebody's face and laugh at them. Turns out it was a VX nerve agent. And his brother was killed in like 10 minutes all on camera. That's horrifying. Yeah. Although the women got away with it.

They realized like, oh yeah, you're, you're okay. At least I know one of them recently got released. I'm not sure exactly what's happening with the case. So the younger Kim wanted to get his start in filmmaking by writing and directing a 20 part series called unsung heroes.

And when you're the dictator son, you get to direct a 20 part series called Unsung Heroes and when you're the dictator's son you get to direct your 20 part series nobody's like maybe you need to cut a season off that or anything like that. Nobody wants to watch a 20 part series. You do when it's mandatory and the only thing on TV but to

do that they need some American villains he just so happened to have four of them that he could make do whatever he wanted now it's without question that dresnick volunteered to be in the series uh but the other men said they were threatened and beaten by dresnick until they agreed to join in dresnick had kind of turned into the government's like attack dog to get the other americans to listen to them and they just get their asses beat the shit all the time now in jenkins book telling the truth he claims that dresnick beat him at least 30 times and even helped the north koreans cut off u.s army related tattoos without an anesthetic yeah now dresnick refuses to admit

he ever beat anybody but he totally cops the cutting off of tattoos but says it's worse but says it was voluntary. What? Yeah. Who voluntarily gets a tattoo cut off? I don't know. Nobody does. Maybe Dreznik, because he was all about some fucking North Korea at this point,

but nobody's like, yes, daddy, cut off my tattoo. Still, that's a no from me. Yeah, that's a hard no, man. I got a lot of tattoos. Kim Jong-il explained to the Korean people that for these men to play villains, they must have an overwhelming amount of patriotism to

North Korea. And because the series was created by their dictator's son, the series became incredibly popular, almost instantly making the Americans who starred in it superstars. The main villain of the movie was Dreznick, became something of a national hero. Whenever they went out in public,

he'd be called Arthur, which was his character's name in the series. And people would give him drinks and food wherever he went. It was around this time. Dresnik met and married a Romanian woman. Now, uh, he happened to go into the one restaurant he always goes into,

uh, because it was the one restaurant he was allowed to go into. And that's when he saw Donna Bambaya who was the first western woman he had seen since he'd been in North Korea so how did Dresnick manage to find the only white woman in all of North Korea and marry her? She was planted wasn't she?

Yes! I love it! Well it's because North Korea kidnapped her from an art school in Italy for the express purpose of marrying Joseph Dresnick. Oh my God! North Korea claims that in Italy for the express purpose of marrying Joseph Dresnick. Oh my god! North Korea claims that she worked for the Romanian embassy, which was immediately discounted by Romania and her entire family. This would not be the only kidnapped woman

that one of the Americans would marry. Jenkins married a kidnapped Japanese woman named Hitoni Soga, who had been taking off a Japanese beach by North Korean commandos. Did they, like, order them or something? Like, I'd like a, I'd like a Japanese one, please.

Now the men themselves claim that they never had any part in this. And I do believe that, um, because, uh, Jenkins and Soga really did fall in love. Like they absolutely loved one another. So sweet.

They bonded based on their kidnapping. Why is that? Why is that not like a romantic movie? I don't know. you know it's it's a really weird saga in general the north koreans kidnapping the japanese like they did it all the time like they kidnapped dozens of japanese women off the beach uh for sexual slavery but also because they they use them as cultural instructors to teach north korean commandos how to be japanese now if you're

thinking that's a really stupid idea you would be correct it never worked and a lot of these people died in north korea and there was a another story offshoot there where i believe it was the shinzo abe who's the current prime minister of japan and was the prime minister back then i could be wrong uh ordered that like demanded that north korea send back the remains and north korea was like yeah okay and they sent back like one box full of random bones they weren't even human that's just rude yeah like they didn't think japan was gonna fucking test them or or like have a doctor glance like that's a dog some of them were human bones they weren't japanese go ahead and roll that around in your head. Nobody's really sure where the fuck they came from.

Jesus. Like I said, North Korea is just about the closest thing to a actual super villain in the fucking world. Now, Larry Abshire married a kidnapped Thai woman named Anna Choa Panjoy before Abshire dropped dead of a heart attack in 1983. Now, nobody's really sure where Panjoy came from. Her family said that she was in some beauty school, I think in Cambodia. And poof, gone one day, reappears in North Korea. Panjoy's still there and swears up and down she was kidnapped.

But her entire family's like, it's really weird that she vanished without a trace for 40 years. She was probably kidnapped. That is weird. Now, Dresnick ended up having two kids with Bombay named James and Ted before she died of luck. James and Ted? You live in North Korea

and you're gonna name your kids fucking James and Ted? Jesus Christ. Should've gone with Braxton and Jax. What's another one? Jax. With fucking two Ys. Fucking Kyle. Now, Bambay eventually died of lung cancer.

He remarried. You know where he found his next wife? In the exact same restaurant. Aw, they brought me a new one. And then they had another son named Tony. Wait, how did the first wife die again? Lung cancer. That's sad. But it seems like

it was really common. So James, Ted, and Tony. Yeah. They all also go by Korean names because they're also very well known in Korea. See, I feel like that would be like, it's like naming your kid something off the wall in America, like fucking Simplicity

or something. Like, if you're in Korea I actually knew one oh my god no you know something named simplicity they know what simple means right it was a it was a teenage pregnancy when I was in high school and she named her daughter simplicity but yeah I said the same thing like you were calling your child simple anyways really really charting a path for that one anyways like if you're in North Korea like at least name them something that they'll like somewhat fit in yeah like Oon yeah well they all like I said they go by Korean names I didn't really write them down but yeah they're on TV and they're movie stars too.

Nice. Dresnick eventually ended up being something of a normal citizen with a normal job, teaching English at the college in Pyongyang. He also ended up translating works by the Kim family as well as translating stolen intelligence

from the Americans. Yeah, it seems a far stretch to go from completely illiterate to that kind of career. Incredibly fluent in two languages, dude. Very, very on point translations. He is the epitome of failing upwards, though.

Yeah, and I would argue he's a huge fucking asshole, too, and I'll tell you why. The 90s rolled around. North Korea lost its Sovietviet support and the ussr collapsed uh a biblical level drought hit the country and north korea's crops failed now uh north korea is not a great agrarian uh society they true they've tried to change that over the years but they've had just numerous crop failures all the time, which is why the Soviet Union ended up having to support

them so heavily. They do have a ton of minerals, but they don't sell them because that would kind of go against their ideology. Most of them just go to China. All those things combined end up with a horrible famine that would reduce people to

cannibalism. Around 3 million people would die in the so-called arduous march. Probably wondering why I'm bringing that up. That's really depressing. We've been making fun of Joseph Dresnick now for a while. Well, like all North Korea's elites, Joseph Dresnick and Jenkins, along with their families, remained unaffected by the famine. While people were forced to boil and eat their clothing or grass as the state's central food management system fell apart and people no longer get their rice rations,

Joseph Dresnick ate so much he became obese. Oh, that's a slap in the face. Dresnick has not spoken much on the famine, as you can imagine. Fucking obese Americans, even in other countries where there's famine and shit? Yeah. Americans just can't get their shit together. I mean, he looks a lot like Kim Jong-un does fat because when you are like a royalty in a fiefdom, you get to do the fuck you want. I just didn't know that white privilege extended that far.

It wasn't because he's white. It's because he's American. that white privilege extended that far it wasn't because he's white because he's american i feel i think joseph dresnick would have been treated just as good if he had been black or hispanic or anything just because him being a american is the only thing that mattered um now in the documentary uh called crossing the line he blames it on the united states which is not true um i was what him walking away or the famine the famine this might be the only time in the history of our show i've ever defended the united states foreign policy but uh the crop failure was a routine thing that happened in north korea that was made much worse by the soviet union falling apart and no longer giving them

literally all the rice they'd ever need for free um and when north korea finally broke down and asked for international aid south korea and the united states were one of the two uh the top two people who gave food to them so like this is one of the few things that is not america's fault but joseph dresnick is a fucking piece of shit. While millions of people were reduced to killing and eating their own children or throwing them off cliffs to save them the torture of starving to death, him and his kids ate like fucking champions in Pyongyang. And he does not. And in the documentary, which is really what pissed me off, because that's kind of on his side. Like, I get he had a fucking shitty life. So who cares if he goes to North Korea

he was in tears saying that he thanked the dear leader for keeping his rations and so many Koreans died so he could live you know fuck you buddy you were having fun there for a little while talking

about some lighthearted stuff you know Americans going to other countries and being movie stars you just had to bring it back down it's worse it's what i do this is why i exist to make you sad i i felt like there's enough people that kind of were on joseph dredging the side including me uh because i've actually watched the documentary before and i recommend it's still good um and i'd like what's it called again crossing the line uh i believe it was by uh bbc but i was like you know what fuck it i get it why not he's had a good life in north korea but then i then like i put two and two together i'm like wait what about the fucking famine because like the famine that happened north korea is legendarily bad and it's so bad that people still don't know the full extent of it because north korea ain't talking

it was so bad that the malnutrition rate from north korea uh and north korean citizens continues to this day to the point that like they lost almost an entire foot in their normal growth span. Jesus. Yeah. So yeah. Fuck Joseph Dresnick. Now. In 1998. Jerry Wayne Parrish died of kidney failure. Leaving Jenkins and Dresnick as the last ones standing. That did not mean the two of them still not hate each other though.

Even through all these years. Jenkins wanted to go home. In 2002. Kim Jong Il allowed some Japanese women who had been kidnapped to visit Japan as long as they promised to return to North Korea. Yeah, like, pinky promise, you're not going to leave me. This included Jenkins' wife, Hitomi Soga. Now, as you can imagine, the pinky promise to go back into captivity did not work,

and the women all stayed in Japan. What? Yeah, what? This eventually led to the Japanese government petitioning for Jenkins to be allowed to join his wife in Japan. And he did in 2004. Once again, under the picky promise that he would return. He did not. They just don't learn their lesson.

At this point, Kim Jong Il is like, why are all my friends leaving me? I have known you for years. Or like the Taylor Swifts of North Korea. They just want people to love them. That's all the nukes were. Just trying to show his friends, see, I'm big and powerful. You can come back to me.

Yes, I'm sorry, Taylor Swift. I love you. Taylor Swift is just emo for women. I love her. Now, there's a pretty the most petty part of this entire story. Japan formally requested the United States to pardon Jenkins. As you remember, he had deserted

and that was a crime. He'd also stolen a gun. Oh, God. Not the fucking gun. President George W. Bush refused actually i actually remember this in the news when i was in high school i was like they're actually gonna imprison that old fuck they did so jenkins decided to turn himself in on september 11th 2004 he walked over to camp zama outside of tokyo and got a haircut that conformed to military regulations and reported to the

military police too hard man yeah he pled guilty to desertion and aiding the enemy in no sense to 30 days in jail loss of all pay and benefits and reduced to the rank of private he's like what like how much you know it would have been really fucking if he showed was like where's my back pay bro is he like a fucking 80 year old private 77 oh nice yeah oh sorry he was uh he was about um he was under 70 years old he's late 60s okay um

he got out of jail after his he got out of jail like two days early for good behavior he's used to it so fuck it right he's like bro I was in North Korea for 50 fucking years you think this sucks uh and afterwards he was given residency and later citizenship in Japan working as a He's like, bro, I was in North Korea for 50 fucking years. You think this sucks? And afterwards, he was given residency and later citizenship in Japan, working as a store's greeter.

He's like a Walmart greeter. Before finally dying in 2017 at the age of 77. As for Dresnick, he remained in North Korea and continued to be known everywhere he went as Arthur. His sons grew up, went to North Korean schools, and eventually joined the North Korean army as officers, where they're now both captains. How old are his sons now? They're in their 30s. All three of them are officers in the Korean army? I don't think they had a choice. Oh, okay.

I don't think. At least two of them are. I think the third one is he's just never on camera. Huh. They were also turned into propaganda actors as well. As Dresnick was now too old, his two sons took over the family business and began playing American villains in North Green films. Are they at least good looking?

No, they look like Joseph Dresnick, who's an ugly, ugly man. Like, how ugly are we talking here? He's got a weird shaped face he's got a real pointy chin he kind of looks like Wario without the mustache Ted Mosby weird shaped no he looks like Wario without the mustache

and I don't I don't mean to besmirch Wario's honor so in the documentary crossing the line it shows Dresnick in the last stages of his life he sounds like he's a pack a day or more smoking habit has acquired some freakish looking metal teeth like a fucking james bond character metal yeah his teeth must have fallen out and they either that they look goddamn chrome um in between trash talking jenkins whenever he got the chance it follows uh dresdnick

as he wanders through the streets drinking and smoking with old korean people and fishing that is his life it honestly looks pretty fucking depressing like it's pretty clear that nobody really wants to hang out with him like he has no friends he ever talks about he just he's talking to strange people on the streets and as far far as I can tell, he still isn't allowed anywhere unaccompanied. Is he still married? No, his second wife died. Oh, man. She just kind of vanishes.

Nobody really ever says what happened. Outlived everyone. Yeah, and because he treats himself so badly, he lived longer than everybody else. Of course. You smoke a pack a day and drink a ton, you'll live until you're fucking 100. Yeah.

I know he's really sure when he died, but we'll talk about that too. His existence looks pretty goddamn depressing. He just wanders around destroying himself and talks about how he once got a ticket for illegal fishing. Sounds like an old war vet. He sounds like every

70-year-old man I've ever met in the United States minus the metal teeth. The show also shows him going to the hospital, which is strangely barren because it is North Korea, and have doctors beg for him to stop drinking himself to death all while he's hacking his goddamn lungs

out and being treated for heart disease. Lovely. In 2017, Dresnik's two sons appeared on North Korean state television in full military uniform and announced the death of their father, saying, quote, Our father was in the arms of the Republic and received only the love and care of the party until

his passing at the age of 74 and that he, quote, died pledging his loyalty to the great leader Kim Jong-un. So the same year as Jenkins? Yep. Oh, shit. It was like an anti- love bond. Yeah. I don't know the exact...

So North Korea never released exactly when he died. So we don't know if he actually died after or before Jenkins. I hope before. I hope Jenkins won that. I mean, Jenkins had a couple years on him because he was a little bit older anyway. Yeah. But like going into the story,

everybody likes to treat Dresnick with like kid gloves. I think he's a fucking piece of shit yeah he sounds like a piece of shit like he was made fat and happy on the suffering of millions of North Koreans that didn't even have anything that he had

and he I mean I understand why in crossing the line he is fully North Korean propaganda. Because he has to be. He's never going to have an honest opinion about North Korea. He can't. Yeah, and if you're given a lavish life for being something and everything that you could ever want,

and your kids are taken care of and everything, yeah, you're going to... This is like if you asked Assad's kids how Syria is. Oh, it's fucking great. Yeah, it's more than he ever had growing up as a kid or in the army it yeah it asking any dictator's inner circle how their country is is you're gonna have a different world it's like asking anyone with over a million dollars in america how they think america's doing it's great yeah like they they're completely blind to everything uh over a million dollars is optimistic joe um ask anyone who has a stable somewhat comfortable life in america and they think

that america is the greatest country on earth and there's nothing wrong with it i would say we're mostly stable but we don't we're we're outside the the purview of most people, I think. Yeah. I just I talk to a lot of a lot of people who because their life is OK and because their family is doing all right. Yeah. They're not rich. They're not, you know, they still pay out the nose for fucking medical costs and all that stuff. They're like one hospital trip away from losing their house.

Right. But because they're doing OK right now, there's obviously nothing wrong with this country they can't see anything right and that's like and this the small amount of give that dresnick had on that is like they died so we could have this yeah well technically you're not wrong because when three million people died it's a whole lot less mouths to feed you fucking asshole it's i mean it's a really similar mentality like people people here are impoverished because they just don't work hard enough and we work hard and that's why we have what we have like he wasn't working hard but like people like the people are suffering before a purpose right and and he explained away that suffering as well well we're suffering so we

can they're suffering so we can have all this and it's not their it's not any of our faults like it's certainly not the deer leader's fault it's weird it's a weird and you know it's a weird amount of mental gymnastics i think he actually had to convince himself because i don't know how the fuck you sleep at night living that well while so many people are dying um and just outside because like the way pyongyang works for the most part is you don't get to live there unless you are the top of the top of society so the people in the city were not suffering at all so and since he never leaves the city i don't know if he's allowed to so he never saw it a really healthy dose of ignorance and oh yeah he's like your friend who's never left san antonio i know you have one i have you they're like yeah, this is great. This is fine. It's like the Tom Green character from Road Trip.

He is like... Austin. He absolutely cannot leave Ithaca, New York. That's a crippling condition. You should get that looked at. Yeah, yeah, I'll look into it. I love that movie. So that's our episode. Rich, thank you for joining me. thanks for having me everybody do a shot of old crow

for Nick as he heals and hope that he heals well yeah yeah he's too active of a boy to get slowed down by a leg full of metal yeah we miss you Nick we hope you're back soon so like I said none of your money will go towards

supporting his healthcare costs. But if you do think what we do is worth a dollar, you can give it to us on Patreon, uh, which we use to buy research material and, and hosting. And we pay our wonderful producer, Nate. Um, also I will use that money to buy him video games to play while he is in bed. So there you go. And hopefully a desk. I know we keep talking about this, but seriously, it's not a, we, it's a, you go. And hopefully a desk. I know we keep talking about this,

but seriously. It's not a we, it's a you. We're fine with the desk. I know I keep talking about this, but my arm is sticking to the decayed beer that's left on this table. That's a you problem. Is it?

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