Doomed to Fail - Ep 151 - North Korean postscript: Operation Paul Bunyan

Episode Date: November 11, 2024

Today, we re-visit North Korea one more time to discuss how a tree nearly caused WWIII. Remember that M. Night Shyamalan movie where the trees were the villains? It's like that but a lot dumber. In the 1970s, at the entrance to the 'Bridge of No Return' on the border between South and North Korea, a tree blocked the view of a guard tower—chaos ensued.Learn more about our crazy past with us! Every week on Doomed to Fail!  Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

It's a matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortonthal James Simpson, case number B.A. 019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you to do for your country. You've been what? I've been, it's 10, it's 10 a.m. Pacific time on, I think, Sunday. And I've been up since 7, which is gross. I know. I know.

I've been able to sleep recently either. Yeah. You can empathize. Yeah. Boo. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Doom to Fail. We're the podcast that brings you history's most notorious disasters and epic failures twice a week.

Every week. I am Taylor, joined by Fars, and we're still alive. We, and we're also, like, pretty consistent. I, we are. Like, we've probably missed, like, maybe three episodes over the past two years. Our last, our last episode was episode 150. Yeah, that's pretty good. That's wild.

Yeah, like, we're kind of great. Look of all the stuff we've learned. I know. It's all appreciated and acknowledge how great we are by making us famous. We should be professors. I don't, I wouldn't even go that far. I think you're jumping the shark there a little bit, but I appreciate the gusto. Well, you know.

So am I, am I first today? Yes. Okay. So this is going to be a fun one, Taylor. Oh, thank God. I'm also very sniffly. I apologize to everyone. and I'll try to sniff not that much.

I don't know what's going on. Just stop breathing and it'll work out. Or you can mute yourself every down then. But, okay. So in a rare move for me, I'm not like you. I'm not as consistent as you when it comes to having series. I learned about something involving North Korea and was like, oh my God, I have to do this. Because it just like blew me away.

It was so fun. Oh, fun. Fun, bad. It's fun the right word. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of crazy. So I'm going to be covering a story again, involving.

North Korea in the United States and a whole host of other countries or whatever. Really, in general, when I'm talking about like the West, I'm talking about the United States as a release of North Korea. Makes sense? Yeah. Okay. So this was an incredible story involving kidnappings, murder, and a tree that almost sparked World War III.

Ooh. Yes. Yes. And also, full disclosure, I'm going to be doing a lot of like trying to like articulate a map as I'm having this conversation so like I don't know like there needs to be like some sort of a trigger or like some sort of warning saying like start visualizing it in your head because like I'll just say it I'll like be like start visualizing here's the map and I'll start like talking did you ever hear about the time the FDR did a um a fireside chat

and where he would like you know on the radio talk to everyone and he told everybody to buy maps before so he could explain to them what was going on in Europe and like everyone did That is awesome. I did not know that. So, like, so he was like, he said the exact same thing, like, that you just said. He was like, get a map. I'm going to walk you through it. And people did.

Isn't that cool? So if you have a map of North Korea, bust it out. I have one hanging in my bedroom. So, yeah, I can kind of see it when you pan the camera to the left a little bit. I can see that giant map of North Korea that you have behind you. Comforting. It's sort of my favorite art pieces. Yes.

so all of what I'm going to talk about here has to do with like the demilitarized zone called the DMZ you're obviously familiar with that right we've all seen it yeah it feels like similar but maybe worse to Berlin wall demilitarized zone totally exactly yeah worse but yes similar so obviously this is the border that separates north and south korea it mostly separates it because in the last episode, I discussed how North and South Korea was established and that Kim Jong-il invaded South Korea and then the U.S. fought it back, which resulted in an armistice. The mostly part of how they're divided has to do with that armistice. So the two sides amidst that armist agreed there would be an area at like the eastern end of the DMZ, like close to the ocean, called the Joint Security Area, or JSA for short. so at that time that overlap north and south korea so imagine like an area it was somewhere around 70 acres wide or large in volume quantity whatever and it was just like a hole on the DMZ side where like if you were north green you kind of like enter into the south or south enter into the north in the u.s was kind of operational across the entire thing it's not like that anymore so when you see like pictures of them right now like i'm not talking about i'm not around this But, like, that's the way it was originally.

How long is the border? I do not know that. And like, it cuts the entire length of the peninsula, so whatever that is. So, and what does it look like, I guess, are you going to tell me what it looks like for most of it? So you're telling me there's like a little, there's that, like, a little part that, like, we see on TV that we know about, they, like, look at each other all day. But it's not all like that. Most, so it is, it's most like barbed wire and just, like, people personnel station intermittently across the entire. border and on the north korean side a ton of booby traps to prevent even the attempt of trying

to get across into south korea so um the so okay so as part of this armistice yeah they established the jsa so i'm going to be referring to the jsa joint security area it's just like where all these people can kind of freely move in this like one little bubble so like i said this is approximately 70 acres large and it has been the site of a ton of issues between the north and south and again i say south like yes south queens are there americans are there united nations is there the swedes are there like everybody's there like bt s is there bt s is probably there they probably came in and out every now and then they they had to join the south korea military so that's kind of cool they're doing their service right

now some of them are some they're a little bit older we talk about that later we will talk about that later you know we're going to take up the last 20 minutes this episode just talking about that Um, did, this is such a tangent, but did you ever hear how people do their birthday in South Korea, maybe in all of Korea? So I learned this because of BTS. So some of them were getting older and you have to do your military service by the time you're 30. So they're trying to like figure that out. But for a long time and I think maybe still today, everyone's birthday is January 1st. And when you're born, you're one. You're not zero. You're one. So you could be born on December 3. 31st and the next day you are two.

So you're considered two. So you're going to be behind everything because you're a literal baby. And there's people who are potentially born on January 1st, they're one, then they turn two and they're going to be like two years ahead of you in everything. So it like kind of messes of people's like ability to learn because they're, we would count them as like one, but in South Korea, they're three. Why would why would they do it that way? I have no idea.

but I think they started to change it a little bit because some of the members of BTS were like oh yeah he's 25 but he's really 23 and you're like what so that's so weird wow I don't know why but it was you're like it's it's weird different this is like a really educational

podcast I think I know we should be professors okay maybe I go back you're right we should be professors probably um so going by the JSA so again all these people are kind of intermingling with each other obviously it's not going to be fun or good for anybody there's a lot of childless stuff that goes on like shoving matches and

petty arguments sometimes it would say the u.s soldiers would go pour water on the steps of the north korean barracks the middle of winter so that they would eat shit when they walked out in the morning it would be like fun stuff like a home alone yeah exactly they're literally doing like macaulay calkin gags um that seems fine and then and every now and then like soldiers they would moon each other across like the way or like bang on the other's barracks while they were asleep to just annoy them it was just mostly stuff like that that but there's one part of the JSA that was particularly problematic and this is my flashing warning like try to visualize this moment okay so if you're on like the south eastern edge of

the JSA so what is would be like the closest it would be like it technically would be South Korea if it wasn't for this weird situation there is a bridge that crosses from north to south and it extends far up into North Korea that it leads out of the JSA What is it over? Well, there's like a river or lake There's something that runs. It's over water.

Yeah, yeah. So the name of this bridge is called the Bridge of No Return. Oh, cool. Fund, right? Mm-hmm. So the reason it's called that is because North Koreans operating within the JSA had a habit of kidnapping South Koreans, Americans,

UN workers, and soldiers and personnel, and then dragging them across the bridge firmly out of the JSA and into North Korea outside of the territorial control of the United States

and so there would be no ability to kind of rescue them. So that's why it was called the bridge of no return. Regardless, the U.S., the U.N., the South Koreans, they all had to like manned stations near this bridge

to track North Korean movements and activities. So throughout the JSA, there's all these little outposts. Like there's ones that are filled with like the UN people and the Americans and like North Korea, all that. And it's like staring at each other. It's really funny when you think it's like it's like a sitcom. Like they're all looking at each other across the way with binoculars.

It's like they're looking at me too. Yeah. It's just like another dude and this is a job. And they're just like, hey, yeah. So this is going to be like the visualization part. So we're on the southeastern end of this like little block where the bridge of no return is. so the united nations put up a command checkpoint called cp3 and cp3 is at the entrance to this bridge so this manning this outposts or this checkpoint was considered the worst job at the jsa because you

were alone you are away from anyone that could help you immediately you were facing the north koreans across the bridge and you always had this fear they're going to come over grab you and then drag you across. Also, there's various rules around who can carry firearms, how many firearms there can be. A lot of the fights that these guys got into didn't escalate to, like, gun stuff. It was just a fistfights because, like, a lot of times you weren't allowed to carry guns or weaponry.

That's why they could just run over and grab you and drag you across. What? What do you mean you're like, like, there wasn't just one person there, right? You weren't like alone alone. It was like a group of people who were like isolated, kind of because they're on the bridge, right? So from what I understand, it was like, usually one but sometimes up to two people that were on at this outpost or this checkpoint this was like this was like when you go through like the gates like a parking gates that you pay five bucks and it's like one of those like this is not like a military thing like there's one famous one is it that one or is that a different one that I'm visualizing are you not a checkpoint Charlie no no no I know I'm talking about like there's one place in North Korea that I feel like I see all the time like over the demilitary zone so if you if you are looking at anything that is post 1990s taken that it would it would

not include this because all this was deconstructed in the past 30 40 years um well that job is awful and it sounds like a horror movie you're like I can be pulled across this bridge and never never never and nobody would hear for me never and what the best case would be they kill you but they're not going to kill you you're going to go to like a fucking camp yeah so they called it the loneliest outpost in the world that was the name for CP3 nobody wanted to work this shift yeah i hope they got overtime okay this is going to be like the visualization part so so that like six times i'm still looking at the southeast part of the border thank you thank you i know you paid attention now i got i got you so the one way to alleviate the fear of the workers who were stationed at

CP3 was that the United Nations built a monitoring station called Outpost 5 at the top of a hill with a direct line of sight to CP3. So you're high up. You're always looking down at this one command post. You can kind of see the bridge a little bit to the right of it. But like it made the soldiers working CP3 feel better that like there's somebody within line of side of them. But that's so far away. I know. I know. You're like, you're probably fine. You know, like, So what I learned later on was they actually had multiple types of like JSA-wide alerts they could send out if something was awry to let them know like roughly where it's going awry and they would shift these notifications so that the North Marines would never understand what was going on. It was kind of fun. So the one problem that the Western powers had with kind of the arrangement they had was the summertime was an issue for the people who were.

We're working at CP3 because in direct line of sight from the observation post was a 40-foot-tall poplar tree. And every summer, its leaves would just blossom and create these huge blind spots to be able to observe CP3. So on August 18, 1976, a group of civilian workers, along with United Nations Security Forces and some U.S. soldiers decided they're going to make. make their way to this poplar tree with some axes in hand and start pruning back this, this tree. It's the trees in North Korea. It's in the JSA, so legally it doesn't belong to anybody. Got it. So.

Can you say what JSA means again? Joint security area. Okay. So, again, it's just like a camp that everybody just like moves around in. And it's like kind of hostile in. So soon after work on pruning this tree began, a North Korean commander, a guy, named Pachschol, who went by the name Bulldog because he had a habit of provoking conflicts. He showed up along with 15 of his soldiers.

They sat there. They observed the pruning for 15 minutes before abruptly telling them to stop that they don't have authorization that both sides have to agree to quote unquote landscape changes and that they were outside of violations for whatever their armistice was. And it sounds like they're just living in like an HOA. It's so funny. I know. Like if there wasn't like a bloody end to this piece, like it would actually be really

hilarious. So the Western forces ignored this and apparently they did so pretty disrespectfully. Apparently turning her back on somebody when they're talking to use like the worst thing in the world and that's what the soldiers here did. And the commander sent soldiers up the bridge of no return to bring in reinforcements about 20 more soldiers. Once they arrived he again

told them to stop putting the tree. They turned their back on him again and the commander shouted to his men in Korean quote kill the bastards. So for the next 30 seconds or so a fight ensued that injured all but one person on the western side of this, except for two of the U.S. soldiers, two guys named Barrett and another guy named Boniface, they were killed by North Koreans who grabbed the axes

that were dropped by the pruders and just hacked these guys and butchered them. Oh, my God. Yeah. And it's actually, so the outpost that was monitoring this was filming this live and like caught all of this in real, time happening. There's actually video stills that you can see like there's some guy with an axe handle running at another guy. I mean, I assume that was one of these two. Wow. So North

Korea broadcasts that what had happened from their perspective was basically that the North Koreans did nothing wrong. They would defend them themselves. The U.S. instigated an attack. They attacked these guys and they just defended, defended against the U.S. Shortly thereafter, they're after a North Korean delegation at a conference of countries that never picked a side on the Korean war they proposed the u.s should vacate the korean peninsula entirely they use this as like an example of like hey america is doing like horrible things they provoked an attack on us for no reason we seem to get them out of here immediately so amidst all of this the u.s specifically the part of the u.s i was being run by george hw bush the cia had learned that they had missed a huge buildup of

military forces in North Korea. And this was the height. They didn't see that from their little tree. Yeah, they couldn't make it out. A little tree house. Yeah. They should have cut more of it back. But also this was the height of the, well, not the height of it, but this was like

the Vietnam War was still going on. And so resources there could have been sent to North Korea were being diverted to Vietnam. So it was also a piece of this. A mess. Yeah. So because of this build up and because of the proposal for the U.S. to lead, the U.S. concluded that all of this was kind of like a chess game to position.

North Korea for another invasion into the South. They're like, the building of their military, this attack was weird and like seemingly unprovoked. Like they're getting more and more antsy to attack and go back across the border. It's been 20 years. So there wasn't a ton of options that U.S.

could respond with to the murders and what it perceived as escalations to an eventual invasion. The options seem to be do nothing, which would look weak and result in an invasion, respond in kind, like kill some of their men, and that would obviously lead to a war. And the third was to present the U.S.'s military power in a way that

was hopefully not going to incite a war, but also show like strength. That was the idea. And the U.S. general responsible for all U.S. forces in North Korea was a guy named Richard Stilwell, and he chose a third option. So that is what Operation Paul Bunyan would come to be known as, which was a plan to respond to the murder and also demonstrate the U.S.'s capabilities and their commitment into south korea and the goal was like pretty simple like it was literally just chopped down the tree but to do it in such a way that would make north korea like never want to like do this again so this is this is going to be like a long list here so the plan was to send in eight military engineers to chainsaw the tree down and a support system to keep the north koreans at bay

so accompanying the eight responsible for taking the tree down was two platoons and i learned that a platoon consists of like 40 soldiers apiece so that's 80 soldiers that's very helpful because I always thought that a troop was more than one person but it's one person so I was like that doesn't make any sense but platoon being 40 that totally makes sense yeah I had to do the math I was like I don't know how big any of this is I have no context here so they sent in two platoon so 80 people they sent in South Korean special forces so their version of the green beret they sent in or this was all the plan an infantry consisting of 150 men 24 howitzers which I didn't know what those were either but if you're if you know like you know how like there's those giant

weapons where they're usually on two tires and it's just like a tank like a funnel what's what they called a barrel the barrel of a tank it looks like it's one of those things so they sent 24 of these along with them were 24 men to who who would be the ones responsible for using it they sent 20 helicopters called huis which were if you recall rambo movies it's it's the it's the helicopter that he escapes in like it's never the good helicopter it's so it's so it's like a utility helicopter they sent 20 of those but they also sent 12 gun ships which are the type of helicopters rambo flies when he's attacking the enemy everything is just like different shades of rambo here yeah no no that's the time rambo is a a movie about the vietnam war yeah yeah

yeah it was awesome um they sent several what are called f4 phantom fighter bomber jets, a larger strategic bomber filled with nukes called an F-1-1, several B-52 bombers. And these were really overreacting. These, no, it gets better. So these B-52s, they were on a vector to be basically over Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, as this project was supposed to begin of cutting down this tree. So the signal being sent was this thing is full of nuclear war. heads, it is over your capital and do anything and these all come down on you right here

right now. But the funest one, Taylor, is they took the USS Midway, an aircraft carrier with 40 combat planes and positioned it off the coast of North Korea. Oh, great. Oh, that's fine. Is that fun? Oh, my God. And in addition, all of this, they were planning to rig the entire bridge of no return

with explosives. That makes sense. I mean, you can't do that first. Do that first. I think that is the, that's the final thing to do. Yeah. So this I learned too, which was really fascinating. So still while the general in charge,

he sent all of his plans to Washington for approval. He actually couldn't get an audience with President Gerald Ford because, again, something really interesting and new that I learned. So Ford was in Kansas City at the Republican National Convention. And this convention would be the last presidential convention where the nominee was not known going into the convention. Is that wild?

I hate politics so much. I hate it. So at this convention, they literally were counting ballots between Ronald Reagan and Ford to see who would win the nomination. Apparently it was a super, super narrow margin, but Ford obviously ended up winning. Is that wild?

I feel we talked about this before, because how much fun it would be to have a convention where you actually got to like make a fucking decision. Yeah, just like scream there in the moment. It's so cool. This part's also fun, Taylor. This I also learned just now. So board obviously lost to Carter,

like going into the presidential and the general election. Here's a fun fact. These are the states, this is not an exhaustive list. It was a huge list. But these are some interesting states that flipped from Republican to Democratic. to vote Jimmy Carter in.

Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas. And like, and there was like 15 more states that all flipped. It was incredible. In Futurama, the Gerald Fordhead is always like, I don't think votes matter because he was never voted to be president. He wasn't voted for anything. He wasn't even voted in to be a House majority speaker. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. He's like, I think we need an election. I don't think votes really matter. You're like, they're like, shut up, Gerald Ford. I mean, good for him. Way to trip your way to the top, right? Oh, my God.

So, okay, so obviously Ford was having a ton of his own issues in the middle of all this. And so Henry Kistcher, and again, something I learned just this here was the Secretary of Defense this time was Donald Rumsfeld. I just, yeah. And so they were the ones that were left to kind of evaluate Stillwell's plan. They ended up deciding to also. incorporate a subject of a previous episode, the SR-71 Blackbird, to run reconnaissance.

Like, again, every resource the U.S. had was like, let's just focus on this one tree. I feel like I'm in such an existential dread part of my life right now that I'm not, but like, it's going to be something stupid. It's not going to be like

a complicated thing. It's going to be something like this, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So Kissinger, once they're kind of finalizing plans. He ends up going to Kansas City with the final suggestion for Operation Bunyan and literally in a side room after Ford accepts the nomination. He briefs him on the plan and receives final authorization to move forward. What happened next has been described, quote, as the most carefully staged and concentrated display of power since the day

in World War II. God. So on August 21st, 976, that's three days after this happened. It's 6.48 local time a.m., the vehicles and troops started moving into position, and the working group, which was supposed to take down this tree, starts moving towards a poplar tree, as at the same time, all these gunships, military helicopters, bombers, fighter jets, all of these, the USS Midway, all of them kind of take their positions. So as soon as the working team reached the tree, they hop out of the, out of the military convoy, they start working with the chainsaws and hand sauce to dismantle it. And as work began on the tree, the United Nations sent word to North Korea saying,

hey, we're doing this. We're going to do this peacefully. There's no attempt at violence here unless violence is initiated. Shortly thereafter, a bus of North Koreans arise, military people carrying about 150 troops. They get out. They're basically just standing there watching what's happening. And as the North Koreans arrived, so did the battalion of helicopters. 43 minutes after they had arrived

to the poplar all but 20 foot of the tree had been cut down so they cut like as far as they needed to to clear this line of sight into this one checkpoint the only incident reported was some random North Korean soldier who I'm sure after this had his like head cut off he started taking pot shots at one of the U.S. helicopters

and this visual was so cool the way it was kind of described what it said was it was taking pot shots shots at a copter and then one of the gunships just banked violently and aggressively towards him and just aimed all of its all of its guns like trained them right on this one soldier it's like a scene it literally it's rambos scene oh my god and then he stopped and that was kind of the end of it um interestingly enough so shortly after this north kore basically asked for a meeting in the neutral zone and they read a statement from kim il sung saying he expressed regret

for the death that happened, basically doing a full 180 from saying the U.S. instigated this attack. It was literally the first time North Korea had ever taken public responsibility for any violence, the DMZ. It was pretty cool. And basically that was it.

A few weeks after that, the North Koreans proposed and South Korea agreed to a permanent barrier between the countries rather than this weird no-bans land. And that's what you see today. So, like, what I'm describing, that was in existence for approximately 25, 26 years. And then the images you see now of the DMZ and those buildings that kind of overlap the two sides, that's what it turned into. Wow.

Because, like, we don't need to be co-mingling with each other. All these guys are booning each other left and right and pouring cold water on each other. Like, it's not going to be a good spot for us to be. Right. Eventually. And people are going to be, like, like you said, like, ready to be riled up over any little thing. which is what happened. Yeah, yeah.

So what happened, like, it was weird, like a week or a couple weeks before this, like some North Korean journalists spit on some American, and then that guy punched him, and then he got stomped, like, almost to death by North Korean soldiers. Like, it was like a constant tit for tat, like aggression, and it was never going to go anywhere good.

Like, yeah. It's like having the worst neighbor in the world. Exactly. It is exactly like living in an HOA. We were like, oh, my mom had this fight with her neighbor about a tree similarly. like your you know your tree nuts are falling in my yard and your leaves are in my yard and blah blah blah like seriously your mom's neighbor was upset that the tree had leg you fall in her yard yeah she came like banging the door one time at like eight in the morning during covid to like yell at my mom about it and she was like my mom was like i'm not opening the door to you it's during covid what's wrong with you yeah but like that happens all the time i don't know that sounds that actually sounds like a crazy person i know so you Also, is your mom in Vegas?

Yeah. Yeah, so be happy there's a tree. You're in a desert. You're a thousand percent, right? Be amazed at this tree exists at all. Yeah, this thing's a miracle. But yeah, that was Operation Paul Bunyan. I thought it was just fascinating.

Just absolutely fascinating. This poplar tree that just almost ignited World War III. So did they, they got it down? Like, most of the way? Yeah. Yeah. So they only needed to cut it. it down because it was 40 feet tall they cut it down and they didn't probably have to even go as

far as they did they cut it down to 20 feet where there was 20 feet worth of um the trunk still standing since then um and since they redid the whole area and got rid of this checkpoint the whole thing looks totally different now it's not in all the same thing but they took they cut out the root of the trunk and now there's actually like a um uh whatever like a landmark there's like providing notice that this is where these two soldiers were killed. So. Wow. Yeah.

Crazy. Crazy. But yeah, I thought that was really interesting. And I will probably come off North Korea next week. But let's have to find another story like this. There's so much cool shit I learned in the middle of researching this. I didn't even know. Imagine how much money that cost also.

How much money did that cost? Probably a lot. But I mean, it was probably cheaper than us starting World War. three. I know. But also, I totally forgot that Gerald Ford had two assassination attempts. Oh, yeah. Crazy. And one of them was Twiggy or not Twiggy. What was her name? Squeaky. It was squeaky. It was squeaky. Remember? Twiggy the model. Squeaky from, yeah, I remember. That's wild. Yeah, the Manson girl. Yeah. She's the worst. I mean, they're all terrible, but. So, yeah, hopefully you found that fun. Hopefully, um, if you all know of any other cool.

interesting things. Once I read that they positioned the USS Midway off the coast of North Korea, I was like, okay, I got to talk about this. This is like insane. So many people to like be a part of this silly thing. Yeah, yeah.

And if you're in San Diego, you can go visit the USS Midway. It's in permanent dry dock there. Oh, that sounds fun. Yeah. I do like like the internet. What's that in the one in, there's one in New York. too that you can go to it's fun

Nimitz Enterprise and it's Enterprise yeah See I wanted I wanted to say Enterprise but then I was like Am I thinking of the Star Trek ship? I know I thought I thought the exact same thing But I'm pretty sure it's Enterprise There's a cafe on the Midway that has It has a bacon cheeseburger

With an American flag in it Delicious I'm sure I'm sure they can stay in the yard Um weird you can stay the night there so there there's also footage of in 19 or sorry in 2018 um kim jung un and the then president of south korea i forgot his name

but they meet for the first time at the dmz and for the first time ever the president of south kore invites kim jung un to like step over the line and that was the first time anybody Any leader in North Korea had been over the line since the demilitarized zone was established. It's wild. Kind of fun. If I was in, I'd be like, I don't want to do this because I heard a lot about kidnappings here. What am I saying? You're like, be like, oh, what was the trick?

You know, they could easily do that. So, anyways, that's all I got. Ooh. Anything to read out? No, I don't go on social media anymore. so all right well fucking no no social media no emails no emails even nope you're disconnected from emails as well um well i mean gonna get me oh you could have lied taylor you could just meet something up but please email us i will i will probably come back to social media but i deleted it from my

phone my friend hether was like you should delete it from your phone today and i was like yes so probably a good move it was a good move yes um but we are um but yeah but yeah please send us an email doomed to develop pod at gmail.com. Do you want to talk about anything? Don't want us to talk about anything? We'd love to. Give us more fun stories like this.

Yeah, like what's like a weird thing that you occur? I have a huge list that I'm going to go into for next week. I'm weird. Something weird is weird. Like this literally could have been the launching of World War III. At one point I read something where like one of the generals, like they actually received authorization to use nuclear weapons for the first time since World War II over this,

over this. Because we might actually have to bomb the capital into oblivion. Like, it's crazy. Like, it's a tree. I know. I think they should have just, like, moved closer. Like, move. You move.

Also, this is, like, a really good example of not every fight is worth fighting. Yeah. No, totally. Like, move your guard tower 10 feet to the left. Well, I was actually talking about the North Koreans in this dynamic. Not the Americans, but sure. No, I mean, I mean, everyone. everyone, everyone overreacted.

So I think that the, the checkpoint was there, and then they built the observation point afterwards, and the poplar tree probably grew into it. But, I mean, it was there for 20 years. Like, this didn't happen overnight. Or, like, shoot it. Can't you just bomb a tree? I guess that would also be crazy.

Yeah, so that was literally, wow, are you like a general or something? Because that was actually. Damn it, Ronald, I read your book. That was, that was the exact plan that was going to be the backup. up if the chainsaw situation didn't work was they actually had bombs they were going to strapped this thing and just fucking blow it into a bunch of like toothpicks but they're like that'll also probably kill a bunch of people there and cause more problems oh my god that's so funny

what a world what a world we live in you guys what a world um now so yeah cool uh right to us tell return to social media right to us duma philpot and gmail.com follow us on the Shulls. Taylor will go in in like a week or two and start accepting follows there. And I think that's it, Taylor. Anything else to sign off with? That's it. Thank you. Thank you. Great. All right. We'll go ahead and cut it off.