A Spy Story that Helps Explain Korea

In Kurtz’s monologue in Apocalypse Now, he talks about the real “horror” of war. He tells us that to be a warrior you had to make friends with both horror and moral terror. He talks about the uniqueness the makes the perfect warrior...men who are moral yet at the same time utilize their primordial instincts to kill or watch killing, without feeling or judging. Kurtz reminds us that “its judgment that defeats us.”

The story that author and journalist Blaine Harden tells, about Korea and Donald Nichols in King of Spies: The Dark Reign of America's Spymaster in Korea is it’s own heart of darkness….one we are still very much living with today.

My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with Blaine Harden:

From North Korea to Freedom

If there ever was any question about the human instinct for freedom, the story of Shin Dong-hyuk's escape from a North Korean prison camp will lay that doubt to rest.

North Korea currently holds as many as 200,000 political prisoners in a half-dozen labor camps. Many spend their lives there, often dying from malnutrition and mistreatment. Only one man, born inside one of the brutal camps, raised to be a laborer, has managed to escape. Journalist Blaine Hardin in Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West, tells the story of Shin Dong-Hyuk - how he was starved, tortured and forced to witness the execution of his mother and brother, and how he ultimately found his way to freedom.

My conversation with Blaine Harden:

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