Abstract
This chapter focuses exclusively on North Korea, a state that is so weird that it deserves its own chapter. Perhaps the ultimate deviant case, North Korea could be a bizarre outlier that defies any explanation. Alternatively, it could be the exception that proves the rule. Philip covers some of the DPRK’s most outrageous actions in the international arena, including the series of intrusions in the late 1960s, which some have called the Second Korean War. He also describes more recent behaviors, like Dennis Rodman’s booze-fueled basketball diplomacy; the assassination of Kim Jong Un’s estranged half-brother; and the Kim brother who passed on leading the country because it impeded on his obsession with the guitarist Eric Clapton.
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- 1.
The South Koreans deployed the second largest expeditionary force, after the Americans. They had a reputation for being particularly ruthless among the Vietnamese.
- 2.
Lt. Gen. Daniel P. Bolger, US Army (ret.) is a military historian who offers a thorough recount of the low-intensity conflict instigated by the North during this period. See Daniel P. Bolger, “Scenes from an Unfinished War: Low-Intensity Conflict in Korea, 1966–1969” Leavenworth Papers 19 (2011).
- 3.
When you are born with a name like Bonesteel, I think you have to become a general. There is no other option; Professor Bonesteel sounds wrong.
- 4.
The Navy’s spy ship was a coveted prize. One US sailor died while resisting capture. The Pueblo incident has been covered thoroughly by historians. We suggest reading Mitchell B. Lerner, The Pueblo Incident: A Spy Ship and the Failure of American Foreign Policy. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2002.
- 5.
January 1968 was a terrible month for U.S. President Lyndon Johnson. On top of the events described here, a USAF B-52 bomber with four nuclear weapons crashed into the icy waters off Greenland on January 22. All of these events occurred within the last 11 days of January. Johnson wrote of this period, “I Sometimes Felt That I Was Living in a Continuous Nightmare” (Bolger 2011, 69).
- 6.
As far as I can tell, none of them became church pastors.
- 7.
When it comes to Lee Marvin flicks, my co-author has only seen Paint Your Wagon.
- 8.
In addition, a high school student in the audience died in the crossfire. The ROK government executed Mun four months later.
- 9.
In the 1970s, Kim Pyong-Il and Kim Jong-Il were heated rivals. In order make life a little easier for his favorite son, Kim Il-Sung made Pyong-Il North Korea’s ambassador to Yugoslavia and sent him packing. Separated from his personal networks and out of the sight of influential party officials, it would be too difficult for Pyong-Il to mount a serious campaign for party leader upon the death of Kim Il-Sung. To this day, Pyong-Il is still part of North Korea’s diplomatic corps. His current post is Ambassador to the Czech Republic.
- 10.
You will not find Rangoon, Burma on a map unless it was published before 1989. Rangoon, Burma is now known as Yangon, Myanmar. Long story short, a military junta de-anglicized the country’s name as part of an anti-colonial campaign in the wake of its illegal seizure of power. Yay for independence, boo for autocracy.
- 11.
The last one at the time of writing was just before the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics with NBC News. See Bill Neely. “North Korean Ex-Spy Kim Hyon-hui Casts Doubt on Kim Jong Un’s Olympic Motives,” NBC News, January 24, 2018. www.nbcnews.com/news/north-korea/north-korean-ex-spy-kim-hyon-hui-casts-doubt-kim-n839746.
- 12.
North Korea brings its weird A-game wherever its athletes go. At the same tournament, observers were initially impressed by the throngs of vocal North Korean fans. Later on, journalists discovered that those supposed North Korean fans were actually Chinese paid by the North Korean government to pose as North Koreans.
- 13.
Who better to lecture accomplished international athletes than Kim Jong-Il? According to popular legend, he set the international record for a round of golf with an unprecedented thirty-eight strokes under par. Impressively, it was the first time he ever swung a golf club. Kim Jong-Un has yet to rival his father’s boss golf skills, but he did recently design Pyongyang’s first putt-putt course. See Josh Sens, “The Real Story Behind One of the Most Fabled Rounds in Golf” Golf Magazine (June 1, 2016), accessed on March 11, 2018 at http://www.golf.com/golf-plus/behind-kim-jong-ils-famous-round-golf.
- 14.
Kim’s son would learn his lesson in time for the 2014 FIFA World Cup. Martin Rogers (2017) writes that the government told its people that North Korea won the tournament. In reality, it did not.
- 15.
Nearly seventeen years to the date, a journalist found and verified an old set of fake Brazilian passports for Kim Jong-Il and Kim Jong-Un, to be used in case of an anti-Kim revolution. See Guy Faulconbridge, “Exclusive: North Korean Leaders Used Brazilian Passports to Apply for Western Visas” Reuters Wire Service (February 27, 2018), accessed on February 27, 2018 at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-kim-passports-exclusive/exclusive-north-korean-leaders-used-brazilian-passports-to-apply-for-western-visas-sources-idUSKCN1GB2AY.
- 16.
Unverified reports indicate that Jang was executed by a pack of hungry dogs. North Korean news claims that executioners starved one hundred twenty dogs for five days. Next, they stripped Jang naked and let the dogs eat him. This is the only method of execution better than the one that Jang’s assistants faced; they were allegedly shot with anti-aircraft guns.
- 17.
Kim Jong-Il had two daughters, Kim Sol-song (born in 1974) and Kim Yo-jong (born in 1987). Both are working in the government, and the younger Kim has been elevated to a highly visible position after her full brother Kim Jong-Un took power. She accompanied the North Korean athletes to the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics.
- 18.
North Korea isn’t the only dangerous place that Inoki has conducted his unofficial one-man diplomatic missions. In 1990, before the start of the Persian Gulf War, Inoki traveled to Baghdad to meet with Saddam Hussein to successfully secure the release of 41 Japanese hostages being held by Iraq. He also managed to put on a wrestling event in Iraq during that time, as part of the hostage negotiations. A wrestling event and the release of hostages! Who else could have managed that feat?
- 19.
The story of Charles Robert Jenkins is an interesting one. He defected to North Korea from his army unit in 1965. His wife was Hitomi Soga, who was kidnapped from Japan by North Koreans in 1978. She was married to Jenkins in 1980 and had two children with him. In 2002, she was permitted to return for a visit after pressure from the Japanese government but she never returned to North Korea. Under pressure from Japan and other countries, the DPRK allowed Jenkins to visit with his wife and kids in Indonesia. Of course, Jenkins shouldn’t have been trusted, because as soon as he landed he asked for political asylum. To make a long story short, he struck a deal with the US Army to serve a thirty-day sentence for desertion and lived with his wife in Sado Island, Japan until his death in December 2017.
- 20.
You can catch the story of the Dresnoks in a recent documentary. See Daniel Gordon, Crossing the Line. London: British Broadcasting Company, 2006.
References and Suggested Readings
Bolger, Daniel P. “Scenes from an Unfinished War: Low-Intensity Conflict in Korea, 1966–69,” Leavenworth Papers 19 (2011).
Byman, Daniel, and Jennifer Lind. “Keeping Kim: How North Korea’s Regime Stays in Power,” Harvard Belfer Center, July 2010. https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/keeping-kim-how-north-koreas-regime-stays-power.
Chapman, William. “North Korean Leader’s Son Blamed for Rangoon Bombing,” Washington Post, December 3, 1983. Accessed on March 14, 2018 at https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1983/12/03/north-korean-leaders-son-blamed-for-rangoon-bombing/ddec34cc-9c12-4fc6-bf75-36057091aa4e/?utm_term=.078043562907.
Cho, Joohee. “The Koreas Have Come a Long Way Since the North Blew Up a Korean Air Flight Before 1988 Seoul Olympics,” ABC NEWS.com, February 7, 2018. Accessed on March 14, 2018 at http://abcnews.go.com/International/koreas-long-north-blew-korean-air-flight-1988/story?id=52788651.
Cummings, Bruce. Korea’s Place in the Sun: A Modern History. New York, NY: Norton, 2005.
Faulconbridge, Guy. “Exclusive: North Korean Leaders Used Brazilian Passports to Apply for Western Visas,” Reuters Wire Service, February 27, 2018. Accessed on February 27, 2018 at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-kim-passports-exclusive/exclusive-north-korean-leaders-used-brazilian-passports-to-apply-for-western-visas-sources-idUSKCN1GB2AY.
Gordon, Daniel. Crossing the Line. London: British Broadcasting Company, 2006.
Jenkins, Robert Charles, and Jim Frederick. The Reluctant Communist: My Desertion, Court-Martial, and Forty-Year Imprisonment in North Korea. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.
Lerner, Mitchell B. The Pueblo Incident: A Spy Ship and the Failure of American Foreign Policy. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2002.
Neely, Bill. “North Korean Ex-Spy Kim Hyon-hui Casts Doubt on Kim Jong Un’s Olympic Motives,” NBC News.com, January 24, 2018. Accessed on March 14, 2018 at https://www.nbcnews.com/news/north-korea/north-korean-ex-spy-kim-hyon-hui-casts-doubt-kim-n839746.
Onishi, Norimitsu. “South Korean Movie Unlocks Door on a Once-Secret Past,” The New York Times, February 15, 2004. Accessed on March 14, 2018 at https://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/15/world/south-korean-movie-unlocks-door-on-a-once-secret-past.html?pagewanted=1.
Rogers, Martin. “Even Sports News in Korea is Bizarre,” USA Today, April 24, 2017. Accessed on March 11, 2018 at https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/2017/04/24/north-korea-world-cup-soccer-golf-kim-jong-il/100854028/.
Sens, Josh. “The Real Story Behind One of the Most Fabled Rounds in Golf,” Golf Magazine, June 1, 2016. Accessed on March 11, 2018 at http://www.golf.com/golf-plus/behind-kim-jong-ils-famous-round-golf.
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Mislan, D.B., Streich, P. (2019). DPRKLOL. In: Weird IR. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75556-4_5
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