The Modern History

All slammer, no glamour: The reluctant North Korean film star | VICE

On January 4th, 1965, a confused young sergeant in the US military named Charles Jenkins drank ten beers before setting off on his nightly patrol duty along the demilitarised zone between North and South Korea, where he had been serving for the past year. Having previously been shuffled back and forth between South Korea and US outposts across Europe, he feared his next deployment would be in war-torn Vietnam. Replaying in his mind the horror stories he’d heard of the battles going on in south-east Asia and afraid of dying in the jungle, in his boozy haze he made a snap decision. Drunkenly he stumbled over the border into North Korea with his hands in the air, giving himself up to his communist enemies. He would remain there for forty years before escaping.

And what would you do to pass the time if you were in North Korea for forty years? That’s right, you’d grab socialist realism cinema by the balls and become its bad ass movie star, garnering a nation of adoring fans in the process, who will love you as much as their dictatorial despot leader will let them get away with.