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A Danish chef and a former cocaine trafficker do shady deals with a regime under strict UN sanctions. Director Mads Brügger’s documentary “The Mole – Undercover in North Korea” describes a strange unfolding of events with the potential for major political sanctions.
“North Korea’s mysterious and kitschy facade makes people see the country as funny, but it’s a mistake,” says director Mads Brügger.
Mads Brügger had zero expectations. In fact, I didn’t even feel like doing the documentary. After filming the satirical “The Red Chapel” in North Korea in the early 2000s, and then barred from visiting the country again, the prematurely retired chef Ulrich Larsen’s proposal did not seem appealing: infiltrate the association. of North Korean friendship in Denmark.
Eleven years later, the mole Larsen has infiltrated one of the world’s most brutal dictatorships, been involved in secret arms and drug deals, and the UN has asked Brügger and his team to share their knowledge of how North Korea violates international sanctions.
– The association in Denmark is a group of isolated old hippies who idealize communism. But a turning point came when the mole went to North Korea for the first time, met with the (North Korean) international friendship association, and was recruited by its president. I knew him and knew that he was insanely crazy, says Mads Brügger by phone from Denmark.
Through the president of the friendship association, Alejandro Cao de Benós, Ulrich Larsen goes deeper and deeper into closed North Korea. When Larsen and “Scandinavian oil billionaire Mr. James”, in fact a contract actor who was previously a drug dealer and soldier in the French Foreign Legion, sign a large order for weapons and methamphetamine in Pyongyang, it is a fact: North Korea violates the strict sanctions that the UN placed the country under.
– There is something positive here: sanctions work. The North Koreans are desperate – towards the end it was almost as if they begged and asked “Mr. James” to buy them. This shows that they have a hard time selling their products.
But Mads Brügger also sees another interesting aspect.
It is extraordinary that a former Danish chef and a cocaine addict have gotten so far in the system without encountering any kind of foreign intelligence service. It may be luck, or the world doesn’t have keen enough eyes on North Korea. In that case, it is troublesome.
Brügger’s documentary claims that an underground arms factory was to be built in Uganda, a flagrant violation of the UN arms embargo. The North Korean embassy in Lidingö, on the outskirts of Stockholm, acted as a focal point for the project according to the documentary.
TT: What consequences do you hope the documentary will have?
– The North Koreans will continue on the same path and will break sanctions in any way they can. But I hope this means a break. We’ve documented how they work, and it’s embarrassing.
Visits to totalitarian North Korea – “the most terrible slave state you can imagine” – in the early 2000s left a deep impression on Brügger.
– It is difficult to explain. You get those little glimpses, the feeling that something terrible is happening around a corner or behind a curtain, and it stays with you forever.
The key words in the North Korean version of communism are “national independence” and “self-confidence.” In practice, this has meant isolationism, oppression and hunger for the population of 25 million. For Brügger, sanctions are a necessity, even if in the long term they run the risk of spreading to the civilian population.
Millions of North Koreans starved to death in the 1990s, before sanctions. Whatever happens to the regime, the population will live in misery. The country is horrible. The sanctions must be there to pressure the regime and disrupt the luxury life of the elite.
Background: North Korea
Communist North Korea was founded with Soviet help in 1948, after Korea was divided into an American and Soviet occupation zone after World War II. A civil war between North Korea and South Korea broke out in 1950-53, after North Korean troops crossed the border and went on the offensive.
The two countries have never made peace, but a ceasefire still prevails. A demilitarized zone four kilometers wide separates the two countries.
Arbitrary arrests by critics of the regime, the lack of legal security, and torture and ill-treatment of prisoners in the country’s prisons and concentration camps are widespread problems. The information also indicates that the country practices public executions.
According to Amnesty International and people who fled North Korea, the country is home to large labor camps for dissidents.
Mads brügger
Mads Brügger, born 1972, is a Danish journalist, television host, author and director.
The documentaries “The Red Chapel” (2009) and “The Ambassador” (2006) received great international attention.
In “Dag Hammarskjöld Open Case” (2019), the circumstances surrounding the death of UN chief Dag Hammarskjöld in a plane crash in what was then Northern Rhodesia in 1961 are investigated. For the film, Mads Brügger received, among other things, the award for conducting the Sundance Festival.
“Mole – Undercover in North Korea” (2020) shows how the North Korean regime works to circumvent harsh UN sanctions against the country.
