Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - *PREVIEW* The Blue House Raid

Episode Date: June 11, 2025

COME SEE US LIVE IN LONDON! https://bigbellycomedy.club/event/lions-led-by-donkeys-podcast-live-big-fat-festival-southbank/ For this week's bonus, we're discussing the late-'60s insurgency in South Korea, back at a time when the DMZ was more of a concept than an actual barrier, and the North Korean military trained an elite commando unit to sneak across the border in 1968 with a mission to kill South Korean president Park Chung-Hee. They got... closer than you might think. Get the whole episode on Patreon here! https://www.patreon.com/posts/131204772

If you've ever wanted to see us live, well, we're heading back to London. That's right. Again. We will be performing June 22nd at the Big Fat Festival at the Big Belly Comedy Club in London. So get your tickets now. They'll be in the show notes. You can come see us, like 20 other acts, including friends of the show that we have worked with before. Get your tickets now and we hope to see you there.

All of this while, you know, this second secret war erupted down the DMZ. The commander of the UN troops, the awesomely named General Charles Bonesteel III. Oh hell yeah. He knew the forces there were badly unprepared for any real action. So he pitched the novel idea of building a physical barrier over the American sector of the DMZ to stop fighting an infiltration, which I know when we picture the DMZ in our heads today, we all know what it looks like. But back then, it looked exactly what it was, which is like a frozen front line of an ongoing war rather than a hardened border. And his idea was approved. The government refused to give him funding for that barrier though

because all the funding was going to Vietnam. So he personally begged LBJ for money and he also asked for like captains who were leaving Vietnam after their tour to be sent to South Korea rather than back to the U.S. to create like you know give us someone who knows what they're doing. So he got his money and the Americans are building the barrier. Dozens of US and Korean soldiers are still being killed and fighting across the DMZ and North Korea is still playing the raid over the border. North Korea has problems of their own, of course, but their intelligence apparatus reached far enough into South Korea

they knew of the struggles of the American garrison. Did those translate to be like wary of the ROK forces at all? Not even a little bit. At no point of the North Koreans planning, did they at all have a bullet point where they were like, this South Koreans might fuck us up. They just assumed they wouldn't have to worry about them. They only planned for the Americans. And while US forces struggled to find budget and men for their DMZ patrols, Unit 124 had been preparing. Elements of the team had been mapping out the path they would use to cross the DMZ into

South Korea, and they settled on the approach of the American sector of the DMZ, not because of staffing or leadership issues, but for something much, much simpler. The American sector was overgrown with trees and bushes that the American soldiers, maybe more evidence from their lack of leadership or just bad leadership in general, just never bothered to cut back so they could actually see from their positions. Meanwhile, in Korean patrolled sectors, they had, owing to frequent ambushes, cut back the cover and concealment because once you get rid of those, ambushes are less likely to happen. What an idea. This is like the Sergeant Major's wet dream story about why you like to cut the grass outside of battalion headquarters.

Tactical grass cutting. I mean, after all, that's just Operation Paul Bunyan. Among other things, yes. Outside of that, unit 124 had a full mock-up scale size of the Blue House built in North Korea, and they rated it multiple times per day. Some sources said they did this for two years but others said that you hadn't even been around that long. But either way they had been doing this for a long time and knew every corner of the house and every single team of the

commando section had a specific job to do. And it was decided that the mission should go ahead of the dead of the Korean winter in January, 1967. And like we said, Korea gets cold as shit and colder still in the mountainous DMZ area. And during the scouting missions, North Korean commandos saw that the American soldiers that were manning the DMZ section virtually never left the moderate warmth of their dugout to do their jobs and

patrol their sector. So they decided that is where they would target. Yeah, they did a radio intercept and they just heard like a perfect unison of a thousand voices like the Do you like jazz B movie meme just going, Oh, my tummy hurts. My feet hurt. I'm cold. I'm cold. On the night of January 17th, 1967, a team of 31 commandos snuck up to the fence that General Bone Steel fought so hard to get funded and installed and simply cut right through with a pair of bolt cutters without being noticed. The fucking next time a guy called General Bone Steel is fighting a DL war is when he's recognizing his subordinates on Grindr in like 2014.

I mean, I got to be honest with you, General, like they're sending General Bone Steel sounds like something that would give Bolsa Doom a moment of pause. And yet it doesn't seem as though he's been particularly effective in this regard. I come back to like the guy named General Bone Steel could be painted as some kind of Warhammer 40k character. Yeah. But if it was like the weird part of 40k lore that focuses on the Imperium not funding something correctly. So, but as Tom alluded to also general bone steel could also be like a character used for the stage. So they're like the most recent tour for scissor sisters. So I didn't get that joke because

he's heterosexual. So with that, the commandos, they ditched their uniforms and changed into street clothes to, to continue their march. And it does make me think, fellas, what is your assassination squad drip look like? They all packed street clothes, but like, you know, I got it. I got to think what you're sneaking over. I mean, for me being from Michigan, our South Korea, I suppose, is Ohio. That means I have to dress in a way that allows me to blend in to Ohio, which means I have to cross the Toledo DMZ, smash out several of my teeth,

immediately dress in like Walmart denim, an Ohio State shirt, and I don uh, I don't know what else, um, Rob, a payday loan place. So you're dressed just dressed up like meth head pole wall. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty much. I was going, I was going for Ohio state fan meth head also known as an Ohio state fan. All Korean men over the age of 30 dress like they're either about to play golf or about

to climb a mountain. So like, I think that you imagine that, congruity. I'd really love the idea. They, they, they're out of date. So they come over the border dressed like, I don't know, like Elvis. Yeah. I mean, I'm going to assassinate the president. We're going to kill him. I'm going to kill him. I'm going to kill him. I'm going to kill him. I'm going to kill him.

I'm going to kill him. I'm going to kill him. I'm going to kill him. I'm going to kill him. I'm going to kill him. I'm going to kill him. I'm going to kill him. I'm going to kill him.

I'm going to kill him. I'm going to kill him. I'm going to kill him. I'm going to kill him. I'm going to kill him. I'm going to kill him. I'm going to kill him. I'm going to kill him. they they're out of date. So they come over the border dressed like I don't know like Elvis Yeah, I mean I'm gonna assassinate the president, Mo Man these platform shoes suck for running through the forest. I have four brothers in this and I'm gonna kill Park Jong-il The flames are getting higher. I'm in a grave with a guy

We can't go all together as North Korean spies, North Korean spies. What is even crazier than getting over in the middle of the night without being found is that even the next morning, nobody manning the length of the DMZ bothered to walk the fence and thus they gave the commando team Hours of free rein who are now running through the mountains I assume not in Elvis platform shoes through the border region on the way to Seoul which For people who don't know is not far away from the border about 35 miles very close. It's extremely close Yeah, after this the men changed into uniforms of the Korean National Police. So in case you're keeping track, that is second wardrobe change and continued

their sprint into the woods, which from everything I've heard about these guys sounds like a gang of Korean terminators. They camped out for the night, having been in the process of infiltrating for about a day. And then the next day, the commandos were discovered by four brothers who hiked into the woods to cut some firewood. At first, the commandos attempted to pass themselves off as the cops they were dressed as. They did speak perfectly accented South Korean dialect Korean, but the brothers didn't buy it.

The reason for this are, for example, why the fuck is there just 30 cops chilling in the middle of the forest like this seems unnatural sometimes you need to go out comping with 30-year homies cops taking ayahuasca in the woods they're trying to conjure this the pure spirit of spousal abuse and then as the looked closer, they realized that the guy who was supposed to be the police commander had his rank so down upside down. Like, Oh, that's suspicious. No men in Korea have been in the military. Right. There were still other problems. While a large scale infiltration like this hadn't happened before in the South due to constant fighting at the DMZ, the South Korean government had been cranking out PSAs for weeks warning regular Koreans

to be on the lookout for possible North Korean infiltrators. So pretty much immediately the brothers were like, I'll yell motherfuckers from North Korea. This led to a debate between the commanders if they just need to kill these guys or not. But they didn't. The group had said the best thing they could do was sit the brothers down and educate them about political theory. Which I, if I was with the brothers I would immediately steal one of their guns and kill myself.

Like I would commit suicide by cop so fast. Committing Korean seppuku just like cutting your stomach open with a giant tabaki. Yeah, I love the idea that you just get fucked, you're getting abducted in the woods like it's Hansel and Gretel. And they just hit you with a leftist meme that's like 20,000 words in tiny font. I would do everything in my power to get away from these people. Like, could you just beat me or something? And this went on for hours, hours of this shit. And finally, the commander of the commandos, a guy named King Jong-un.

Not that one, promised the brothers Look, once our mission is done and the revolution comes to the south You'll be given glorious positions within the new people's government And if that wasn't promising enough Kim then quickly drew up a contract to seal the deal They decided the brothers needed evidence that their word could be trusted So they just signed it with the promise that if you sign the contract and agree, we'll let you go. And the brothers all signed the contract. They promise that they will keep their mouth shut. They thank the commandos for telling them about the glories of Kim

Il-sung thought. And then the commandos all smile thinking they have been successfully reeducated to the cause of communism and the four brothers immediately run to the nearest police station and stitched on all of them. Yeah, exactly. It's like, it's like, please go arrest these dorks immediately. World's fastest smash got cut to Jopel a la police. I would pro like, like those guys probably had a pretty shitty life, you know, like, you know, they're they're not doing very well. You could have just bribed them, just bribed the brothers. Maybe they'll keep their mouth shut and said you would prison them for hours

and drove them nuts. I didn't know this detail. This is phenomenal. Thank you for this show.