Warbird Information Exchange

Following up on the previous thread about movies in theaters worth seeing ... Here is a DVD worth renting.

One of the most oddly fascinating films I’ve seen in the past year was a documentary called “Crossing The Line,” about a man named Joe Dresnok. He’s an instantly recognizable type for most Americans – the guy you see in an average bar, a heavyset, alcoholic, cigarette-voiced sixtysomething, spouting his ill-informed opinions to anyone within earshot. The difference is that Dresnok has lived in North Korea since 1962.

Originally from Virginia, his parents split when he was five, and he spent the next several years bouncing from one miserable foster home to another. When his father remarried, the stepmother announced she did not want Joe living with them. His father put him in an orphanage, promising to return for him someday. He never did.

Dresnok joined the army when he turned seventeen, and got married soon after. Neither move panned out. When he was stationed in West Germany, his wife dumped him for another man. Some time later, while stationed in South Korea, he left his post without permission. The next day, his commanding officer ordered him to report for a court martial.

His marriage was over. His family had abandoned him. He faced a court martial and possible jail time. There was only one thing left to do. On an August day in 1962, he “crossed the line,” and went over the border to North Korea.

At first, things were no better in the DPRK. He and three other American defectors were viewed with suspicion and hate by most North Koreans. Feeling unwanted, they sought asylum in the Soviet embassy, but were denied. With no where else to go, Dresnok vowed to find some way to fit in.

It was only after a lengthy period of “re-education” that he found his niche. At that time, the current North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-Il, fancied himself the George Lucas of North Korea. He cast Dresnok and the other defectors in a twenty-part propaganda film about the Korean War called “Nameless Heroes.” Dresnok and the others played the roles of the eeev-yil Americans.

That did the trick. The film made him famous in the DPRK. He married a Romanian woman named Doina Bumbea. The evidence suggests she was kidnapped by the North Korean government. He talks about her quite a bit, but never produces a single photo of her. (She may be one of the European women seen in the North Korean films.) Bumbea died in 1997. She and Dresnok had two sons, one of whom is interviewed at length.

Dresnok says he is happy now, and would never return to America. He’s probably telling the truth. He has a stable family life, something he never had in America. The DPRK government provides him with an apartment and a stipend. His third wife, the daughter of an African diplomat and a Korean woman, provided him with a third son.

Yet there are moments in the film that make one wonder whether he really loves his life in North Korea as much as he says. When the filmmakers show him photos of his childhood friends, there is a look of deep sadness in his eyes. (And a look of childlike wonder at the laptop computer displaying the photos.) He spends his days aimlessly fishing in the Taedong River, chain-smoking and drinking to excess. His doctors have repeatedly told him he will die soon if he doesn’t curtail his drinking and smoking.

The film also gives westerners a rare and fascinating look at Pyongyang, a city of stunningly beautiful people and stunningly hideous Soviet architecture. Although Dresnok and his family are among the elite and favored, they are still subject to almost-daily power outages. Yet even during the times when the people’s power is cut off, the monuments to Kim Il-Sung and The Revolution remain brightly lit.

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