The Jordan Harbinger Show - 528: Ulrich "The Mole" Larsen | Undercover in North Korea Part Two

Episode Date: July 1, 2021

Ulrich "The Mole" Larsen (@UlrichTheMole) is a family man from Denmark who spent 10 years undercover in North Korea infiltrating its illicit arms trade. [This is part two of a two-part episode. Part one can be found here!] What We Discuss with Ulrich "The Mole" Larsen: How did a young Danish chef and family man wind up working undercover in North Korea to disrupt its illicit arms trade? Why would the repressive regime that runs North Korea trust a young Danish chef and welcome him with open arms? How some low-status Westerners cozy up to the North Korean regime for the chance to boss around other Westerners visiting the country and the illusionary rush of power it gives them. The natural qualities and easygoing talents that made Ulrich such an ideal mole in a place where every move is surveilled and analyzed by invisible eyes from every nook and shadow. Why operating clandestinely in the DPRK is no job for a teetotaler. And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: https://jordanharbinger.com/528 Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course! Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger show. I literally, when I looked at it was like Stinger missiles, Tamobaric, e-missiles, which is very close to nukes, and it was like $8 million, like, $8 million. And this is like $6 million, and we could buy launch machines to every missile. And I was like, wow. I knew this is the most great documentation of the North Korean Weapons Program. Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories,

secrets and skills are the world's most fascinating people. We have in-depth conversations with people at the top of their game. Astronauts, entrepreneurs, spies and psychologists, even the occasional Emmy-nominated comedian, organized crime figure, or money laundering expert, each episode turns our guest's wisdom into practical advice that you can use to build a deeper understanding of how the world works and become a better critical thinker. Now, if you're new to the show, or you're looking for a handy way to tell your friends about it, we now have episode starter packs. These are collections of your favorite episodes,

organized by popular topic. That'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show. Just visit jordanharbinger.com slash start to get started or to help somebody else get started. And of course, I always appreciate that. Today, this is part two with Ulrich the Mole. He spent 10 years undercover infiltrating North Korea's illicit arms trade. Again, this is part two.

If you haven't heard part one, go back and listen to part one, or you're going to come in the middle of the story here. I'm not going to say a whole hell of a lot more. Let's just dive right in to part two. Now, let's continue with Ulrich, the Mole. So you're playing your undercover character, right? And you sacrificed a lot of time, but also a part of your personality. And one of the rituals that you had is that you spray this cologne on.

What did that do? I thought that was kind of an interesting little ritual that you seem to have. Yeah. The story is many years back, my dad gave me a deodorant, and it smelled not that good. Not that good. No. And from my first meeting with those Danish friends of North Korea, they had this cheap perfume on, and it was really, oh, stinking and, you know, not a good one. And when I then came the first time to North Korea, many of the North Koreans, like to use the same deodorant or something.

And it was like, when I had this, the ornament on, it was like, well, now I need to be aware of it. I am undercover. And I just started to use that. And always, before I enter a meeting or did something, I had always Metallica in my earphones. Metallica. So you get in the zone. You're like, all right, spray on my shitty, terrible cologne. Yeah.

Way too much of it, by the way. You're putting on way too much cologne. Like I saw like three, four sprays. But I guess, hey, look, went in Rome. Yeah. And then you're jamming to Metallica. So you're getting, you're getting pumped up to be a criminal, an international criminal. Well, I just took a bad smell and Metallica.

And it's a good thing for Metallica. I love Metallica. Yeah, of course. Yeah. And I remember many times, I think it was the four horsemen. There's a line, you have been dying since the day you were born. You know, it's all been planned. And it was like in my mind that, well, it could go wrong.

So if I die, it's been planned that I should die here or get in trouble. But actually, when they put out a new album, it's such a crazy thing for me to do. but I was in Tarragona with Alejandro after I went to North Korea with Mr. James to do a debrief. And in a point in the meeting, Alejandro, he wanted to show me that so I could tell Mr. James that he took security really seriously. So he bought this bug detector. Is it a could I call in English? Yeah, like a bug detector. So Alejandro has this device that can detect.

So you go to Alejandro's house or bar to meet with him. after going to North Korea and Alejandro wanted to say, hey man, you know, we're doing some 007 shit right here. I've got this bug detector. But meanwhile, you have cameras hidden in your stuff. You've got your audio recording devices. So you must have been pretty unexcited, I would say, or excited in the wrong way to see his bug detector.

Yeah, well, we've been, I think at that point we have been talking together like an hour and a half and I had a computer bag with a camera and a microphone. no two microphone and one camera. And I had a camera on myself and one or two microphone as well. And he just suddenly stands up and say, hey, I got to show you something. And he just walked around me and I just looked over my shoulder and see. And the minute he came out, I couldn't see this frequency thing on the screen going up and down. I was like, okay, this is it.

And I was like, just relax for a few seconds. You must have been ready to sort of like either throw up or. run out of the room or something. Yeah, yeah, but I was like quite comfortable because he didn't want it to to test me out. He just wanted to show me. He was bragging about his new toy, yeah. But then when he came near me, it's of course starting to react. And luckily, I have a small bag on the table with a car key and it was like an electric car key who could send signals to the car and start the car from a mile away or something. And, but if you look at the recordings, I put in my arms like I do here because then he couldn't.

You put your arm across your body so he couldn't get close to the microphone. He was blocked by it and you're holding out your car key. Try it on this. Yeah. That was good thinking, man. I got to hand it to you. And he just bought it. And when he sat down and we just talked like 20 minutes more or something.

And I said to him, well, it's a good thing, but we need to buy a bigger one, a better one. I told him because we talked about he couldn't buy one for $2,000 or something. I don't remember. And this was a cheap one. I said, we need to beg the good one so we can test out for the next time and please do it every time before we come. Yeah, that was good thinking. Hey, please make sure we're in a secure environment

as you walk out with your two microphones and your camera. Yeah, this is insane. But when I came out, I put my earphones in and connected to my phone. And I had to walk 300 meters down to the car. And I just turned on Metallica hardwired to self-destruct. Yeah. And just like, when I came in the car, I had a camera specialist with me who has put up the things arranged with him.

When I'm finished, I call you and I pick you up at that spot. And I drove down and he came in and I said, well, listen, he just took this up. He took out the bug detector and gave me a bug sweep. Like, what am I going to do? And he was like, what? He didn't find it. And no. And I think I was driving like 10 minutes and there was a road.

You're right? And I just put the car in. Pulled over. And then I start to, you know, be sweaty and the things start to work up, and I just need to have up the microphone and the camera of my body and a new shirt on. And I was like, whoa, close call. Close call. But then 18 hours later, I went home.

I came to Copenhagen again. I go to an amusement park with my family, you know, Chevali in Copenhagen, the big amusement park in the center. I went in there having ice cream and hot dogs and roller coaster ice as my children. And 18 hours before I was good practice. in a really big miss. But I think when I was away from the things, I could digest the things and be ready to next part.

And every time, if I wanted to stop, it was just a hand break up and stuff. The production would have stopped. But of course I get interested because at that point, I was aware of this is something that is important to show to the world also how North Korea still undergoes the sanctions and stuff and how they could deal with people.

because, as I said to many people, I was Ulrich, the one who loved North Korea, and I brought Mr. James, who wanted to spend a lot of money buying weapons and selling and stuff. But out in the real world, there's also a Ulreich who loves North Korea, and Mr. James is also existing. So we need to stop those things. Right. So you're saying, I might be a fake Korean Friends Association facilitator of arms deals, and Mr. James might be a fake arms dealer, but somewhere out there,

a real arms dealer and a real KFA stooge who's going to facilitate and running North Korean sanctions or sanctions on North Korea. And you're saying, we did this to show how easy this was because there are people out there who are selling fuel illegally to North Korea, who are possibly and probably getting weapons out of North Korea and selling them into war zones. And that's kind of what I want to discuss here because, you know, you took your trip to North Korea and you're meeting with these arms dealers. Tell me about the first time. You know, you're going into this basement restaurant, which is probably not exactly what you had hoped your trip would have started like? Well, we had a few days where we had a lot of talking and I said,

well, listen, Mr. James are here because Alejandro said, he could buy or look at those things and meet the right people. And then it flipped over by night. And they said, well, we're going to meet tomorrow in a special place. And well, it was not showcased city of Pyongyang. It was out in the slum. But down in this basement was a beautiful restaurant and girls ready for karaoke things. But, you know, when we walked in, it was a bit dark and cloudy on the walls. And I was really, really starting to fear that this could be the end of this story. Yeah. So you're walking into like the basement of a building and you're thinking to meet arms dealers in North Korea. Yeah. You probably weren't thinking, hey, they're going to bust out the carry.

karaoke, we're going to have some great food. You were probably, I assume you thought you were going to take a bullet in the back of your head at some point. Yeah, because the door I was met what was black in leather and it was so thick. And I was like, and we're going down. And people outside the street was really looking scary at me and James because we were Western people. And then the North Korean went, oh, it'd go down here and behind us. And I was like, okay, in the second I'm going to hear this. Oh my God.

And then it's over. And I was like, the door opened. I was looking. Wow. Karaogi was ready and, yeah, well, please sit down. In a minute, the president of our weapons factory and arms factory will join you and a special businessman from Malaysia who came to Pyongyang to meet up with us. And I actually think he was an intelligence officer, but. But he's from Malaysia? Was he North Korean? He was North Korean, but living in Malaysia. Ah, okay. Of what they told us. Yeah. And he was speaking very, very good English. And they start questioning Mr. James.

In one point they asked him about the company name. And we have never fought in our minds that we could get that far. And he just said, Targa. Targa. So you never thought, hey, we should have a company ready to go. Like, they might ask us about this shit. Yeah, no. Epic fail.

Yeah. We literally didn't expect it to go that far. But doing businesses like this, you don't have a bit pitch, saying, hey, we're Targa. We sell weapons. So they were like, oh, okay, if you call it that, well, It's Tucker it is. And then they start questioning in Jim a lot, Mr. James. And I was like, I need to remember what he's telling them, you know,

because if he missed something, I could, you know. Fill it in. Yeah, exactly. And at that point, you could really see that he has been used to do criminal things and talk with people. He's in the zone, right? He's in his element. He was in his zone, yeah.

And he was like ragging and having a beer and having, you know, ginseng snaps and all those kind of things. And we just, well, let's just do an agreement of working together and, you know, whoa, whoa, yeah, yeah. And now let us have some karaoke. So then I was standing up singing Celine Dionne. My heart will go on. And I can't sing and I didn't choose the song. I was just asked to do it. And, you know, it was just fun. And it was a great break, actually. And then suddenly I saw Mr. Kang with my camera. And I was like, oh, shit, he's going to. check it out now. But he gave it to his colleague and said, you have to film Jim and Ulrich and the people here so Ula can bring it home to the people of Mr. James so they can see we had a

great time in North Carolina. I was like, great. Now they really trust me. Yeah. And they took it many times for me filming me and yeah, practically filming themselves doing crimes. Well, it's insane. But they trusted me that much that, well, it but has come as a shock for them and I think today I must be the most hated person in North Korea. It's possible, you know, other than the invisible boogeyman of whatever political figure they hate in the United States at this point. So what did you discuss? Because this isn't just, hey, we want to buy some guns.

I mean, they had a, what looks to be a color printouted menu of missiles, tanks, anti-tank weapons, bullets, rifles. They came prepared to show you the goods. And you brought it back, which is incredible. I mean, when intelligence agents come and talk to you about this, they must be blown away that you have hard copy documents of weapons that they were offering to sell you. Well, it was first when we had those papers. I couldn't do anything with them in North Korea.

I just left them on my room when we were driving the day after. But when we came to China, I brought them in my computer back. And when we came to China, I put them on the floor on the bed. I can't remember. and I just took a picture of everyone first with my iPhone and then with a regular camera and then with the video camera and did a copy of two hard drives. So I had three copies of it in three devices

just to be sure if something happened. But luckily we had the pay was back home with us and I literally, when I looked at it and it was like the price, the way of it, how many rounds, all detailed. And it was, well, Stinger missiles, Tamer Barrett, e-missiles, which is very close to nukes, and it was like 8 million euros of dollar. And this is like 6 million, and we could buy launch machines to every missile.

It was actually just the money, who set the water of what we can do. And I was like, wow, I knew this is the most great documentation of the North Korean weapons program on what day. A smoking gun, no pun intended, is. what we call that. Like, this is great evidence. You telling a story is one thing. You saying, and they gave us this in the restaurant when they gave us a weapons contract, is something totally different. Like, this is a list of weapons with the prices. The weight, they didn't just say, yeah, we'll sell you some guns. They said, this is exactly what you can get and how much it's

going to cost and how much it weighs for you to transport out of here. That's real evidence of intent. Yeah. One of the things, it was an updated version. So they told us exactly how many they have left. They have four of these missiles and 125 of those guns, free tanks. I can't remember the amount of it, but it was an updated what they could offer here and now. Like they updated inventory. Here's what's left. Yeah. Yeah. And it was like, wow. And I called the producer of the movie from Beijing and said, hey, I have some papers back home with us. I think it's a good idea if you come to the airport when we get back to Copenhagen, just so he could have the payers. papers and put him in safe. So he was driving late Sunday night. We came back and he was like

going away from family drive 60 kilometers from home to the airport and back just to pick up the papers because we really needed those papers to be safe. And also he took my hard drives and stuff with him so we could secure all the material. And when I spoke with the director, Mesbruguer, he was like, wow, this has never been done before. And we thought this can't be more crazy than this. We can't do anything more. Right. But then... Until...

But then things get even more crazy, right? Yeah. Alejandro came up with this. Actually, in the beginning, I thought it was a fake person he invented to have money, but he told us that he has contact to a Jordanian businessman who was named Mr. Hisham Al-Jusuki, and he could provide us fuel. And if we could buy the fuel for Mr. Dusuki,

he will ship it to North Korea without being... caught and then the fuel will give us weapons or things to do weapons right so this is a triangle deal so you would pay money to jordan which is legal the country of jordan and he would ship fuel illegally to north korea without getting caught which would give you guys like store credit yeah with the north korean arms company which would then ship weapons to some other country Yeah, well, the plan was to open a factory in Uganda in an island And they would send know-how and people over to build the whole thing in Uganda The plan was to buy an island in Victoria Lake in Uganda

And the North Korean did perfect architecture drawings of this factory How we can build it and actually we could have an a airstrip there So we can fly things in and out You know paying the Ugandan people money to keep your mouth shut And fly it out in the world I was like, this can't be happening. But do we trust that Mr. Dusuki is the right guy? Does he exist?

You know, and I just took my phone asking for a phone number. Yes, it was him. And he was like a perfect criminal, actually. He looks like a real movie criminal or something. Going to Jordan meeting up with him was like, you know, meeting Alejandro No. 2. But in Jordan, everything was possible. He actually wanted me to be his area. manager in Europe for his company, he said, you know, big plans and stuff.

This is wild. Yeah. They want you to build a factory in Uganda on an island that's literally underground, right, with a secret air strip that you can come and go undetected. The factory would build weapons and apparently also methamphetamine, why not, for sale on the international market. So you're using North Korean workers and scientists buying an island in Lake Victoria to hide the air traffic. The factory is literally underground. But the problem is there are thousands of people,

or at least hundreds, living on the island. And the North Korean agents were like, oh, don't worry, we do this elsewhere in Asia and Africa, which, by the way, like intelligence officers take note of that statement that they claim to, anyway, have secret factories elsewhere in Asia and Africa that manufacture weapons and methamphetamine. And I would imagine, how did you feel at this point, right? because you slash they are telling the people that live there, we're going to build a hospital on the island for you. But the real plan is that the government comes in with the police or the military and kicks all of these people out of their home

so that you can build a missile factory and a meth factory on their island. Well, that was actually one of the worst moments for me in the whole project because coming out to this island where people literally don't have anything, they live from fish from the lake and they have a few cows. and yeah, they don't have anything. And to stand with them and have one of their, their own people telling them that these two people here are here because they want to give you a hospital.

So you need to cooperate with them. And we have to pray to God that this will be a great hospital and, you know, great future. Maybe three months later when Mr. James had transferred the money, which he never did, of course. They would just kick them out. They would have four to eight weeks to find a new place to live. it would be impossible for them because they don't have anything.

They have a small church which were literally just stone and a few windows and you were sitting on the ground. I was literally just wanted to throw those real estate brokers into the sea, hoping that they got caught by a crocodile or fish or whatever just to eat them up because it was so cruel. And they were just like, let's pray together the whole time. And they were with the children like, oh, you will have a hospital here. So when you play football, you can come there with your foot.

And the children was like, wow. And it was evil. Yeah. It's evil. Yeah. It was a hell in my head that trip because every time I saw those real estate brokers, I literally just want to kill them. You're listening to The Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Ulrich the Mole.

We'll be right back. Now back to Ulrich Larson, the Mole on the Jordan Harbinger Show. These are evil people that are willing to destroy the life. lives of thousands of people so that they can make a commission off of the money. And not just destroy those lives of the people there, but they're building a factory that's going to distribute weapons and drugs that will kill thousands, tens of thousands of more people, and they just want to make money. I mean, these are the worst kind of humans. This wasn't, of course, somehow, this wasn't even the end of the saga. Things get even more intense, right? The North Korean agents

reach out, and now they want to ship arms to Syria. They want to ship possibly chemical weapons. and maybe even nuclear weapons to the Syrian regime in the middle of the Civil War, it's really telling because during the documentary in the mole, the North Korean agents mentioned, hey, since ISIS is now gone, we're running low on customers, which like, when I heard that, I just thought, do you hear yourself? I mean, even when you're North Korean, you've got to look at ISIS and go, now these guys are a little fucked up.

No, thank you. Yeah, but when I heard that, I was not in the car, when he said that it was Mr. James, and he told me about also and was like we need to stop this soon because next phase is to give them money and then certainly mr james disappeared because the next step for us was to transfer money both for the oil and to the island and maybe us some cash up front but the north korean wanted to meet up with us again and send people to Copenhagen to sign an updated contract So we rented a suite and the Hotel Danglaterre, which is the most beautiful hotel in Copenhagen in whole Denmark.

It's a really great place. And they came to men, and they were there because they were trying to find tourists in Europe to do agreement with tourist boroughs to travel to North Korea. But he was also coming just to sign a weapons contract with us. And it was professionally done. And then Mr. James said, well, I need to order it. like 10,000, 8, 4847s and some rounds. And he was just taking notes in Korean and the paper and we'll bring that back. And from then on, Mr. James became a ghost.

So he just disappeared. But then I had to go for a year talking with Alejandro, Mr. Dasuki, the North Koreans, telling Mr. James is gone, I can't get in contact with him. That was difficult because Alejandro, he wanted to move on. of course he said well i know people like james let's find some new one he's just a bad guy and it was very difficult because mr desugi he threatened with a court justice but then he rethink the whole thing through and wrote to me well i can i can't do that because i'm breaking the law myself right like nice bluff but you're the one offering to sell fuel illegally to north korea so

they can send weapons and meth maybe you don't want to fricking put that in writing genius and then I just kept on speaking with them and I had a meeting in Copenhagen for the KFA, the international meeting, annual meeting. And Alejandro couldn't come because he's still detained in Spain. His passport is detained. So the Spanish government has revoked Alejandro's passport so he can no longer travel? No, they actually did that back in 2016. He hasn't left Spain since. Not that I know of.

I don't know if he has this now, but I don't think so. but, you know, having that meeting, I knew that there won't be long until we have to tell the truth to Alejandro. But at that meeting, I presented a model of the hotel project in Uganda telling those people about it. And it was a risk for me. It was a planned risk because I was expecting when I put that up to people taking pictures, Alejandro will kick me out of KFA. But he didn't. It was like he loved me even more.

he just sent me and oh, please take that away again. And, well, I did, and the other people did. But nothing happened with my status. And then I revealed it to my wife before telling Alejandro, and probably the worst thing was to tell my wife the truth. Yeah, how did she react? I mean, she must have been so pissed off, because she didn't know the whole time, right?

No, well, she knew I was traveling, of course, but she's never interested in politics, so she never asked me any questions really. But when I told her, we did it in our own home, and Mass Breuer, the director, was with me. And it was literally like two small schoolchildren sitting with the principal's office, has been doing something bad for the school. She was, of course, shocked. But as I said, I couldn't tell you what I was doing because then you wouldn't let me go or you will simply sit home be a nerve-wracking wife the whole time.

And for that she was quite thankful that I didn't tell her because of the kids, of course. And so she didn't have to. But then she thought I was an idiot. And well, but she also said that the last year I was going a bit in myself, you know, being more calm home, you know, more close and don't speak a lot because I had so many things in my mind. After I told her it was the plan to tell Alejandro. But then COVID hits. Denmark also. So we actually had to wait it until September. And when I revealed it to Alejandro,

I told him the story that I was going to school in Copenhagen to talk about North Korea. And they have asked if he could participate also from a Zoom connection because they wanted to ask him questions because he was the president of KFA. So your plan is to tell Alejandro what's going on so that he doesn't find out when the movie comes out. And you want to do it on Zoom. Yeah. Because it's COVID and you don't have a choice, right? No.

And actually, I think Zoom was the best thing because if we had to go to Spain, because he couldn't travel, he could be more dangerous for me if we met up with him or something. So then I needed to get out of Spain quite fast. So he thinks he's about to lecture some like college students or high school students about North Korea on Zoom. Yeah. And you decide to tell him the whole thing is a ruse. The whole 10-year-long saga is you being undercover. Yeah, well, I didn't sleep all night. I was just, my wife told me several times, go back to bed or lay down or leave your phone or, you know, because I was so nervous. And the whole setup, we had to, you know, test the cameras, everything. And it was in a suite at the Marriott Hotel in Copenhagen with a fantastic view and everything. So I could relax a bit to lay down the sofa. And then I said, well, Alejandro on a text message, five minutes and the link will come to you. You can join. I said, well, So I will sit behind the scene to begin with just to say hello to you and we can go in.

Yeah, fine. And he just came on the screen and I was like, hi, Alejandro, as you see in the mold, I said, I have something to tell you. And when I tell him, it's like he don't believe me or he is, you know, really surprised. And then Maspooga, which he has a story with who did the first documentary. Right. So the director, Alejandro recognizes him because Madsbrugger traveled to North Korea with Alejandro made that documentary that kind of got Alejandro in a little bit of trouble.

Yeah. You know, the North Koreans were not a fan of this satirical movie that he made. So he knows, that's like his enemy, right? And he's been talking about him many times for me that if I ever meet him in Denmark, I should, you know, smash his face or we talked about earlier, he should be thrown in the mind to work or, and I don't think the first five seconds, when Ms. Bricker goes into the screen with me, he don't know who it is. But then he starts to speak with him, and I think it takes.

around 20 seconds, it's just lifting his hand like this and the picture freeze. 10, maybe 20 minutes later, my name was deleted on every pages from KFA and the Danish Friends of Association. The funny part is an hour later, my phone keeps ringing, and it's the embassy. The North Korean Embassy in Stockholm. Yeah. Wow. Okay.

And this is right after you exposed, came out from under your cover. So what are you thinking at that point when your phone is ringing, it's the North Korean embassy in Stockholm? Well, I just ignored it, of course. And then the next day I got a new phone, new phone number, everything. And then the funny part is when the mole has this premiere, the North Koreans tell the media at first. They don't know who I am, never heard of me. A few hours later, they made a new statement that I came to the embassy with the papers, to them.

But you can see on the film that they handed all the papers over for me, the drawings of the factory and stuff. And the last thing, the next day was it was all just a big lie. So first they don't know me, then they knew me, and then they all was just a big lie from us. But of course, they were under pressure from North Korean regime in Pyongyang, of course. And the Danish and Swedish foreign minister went out to take distance from all of this, and they wanted a deep undergoing investigation of how the North Korean embassy is used to, yeah, provide weapon and arm steel and be a part of those projects. Right.

Because now the embassy is clearly not there to facilitate anything other than get money to the North Korean regime, sell weapons, conduct business deals. You know, embassies do a lot of things, but end running sanctions and dealing in methamphetamine and weapons sales is probably not one of the main things that they are supposed to be doing in Sweden. Well, once again, it just shows that the North Koreans do whatever it takes to get money, weapons, fuel, food, anything. It just started, it was a Sunday evening, it was to be premiered in the television and in the cinema. And we had a special screening in Copenhagen for the press and celebrity people in Denmark. But in the morning, around 8.30, we slept long. My daughter came in, dad, dad, you're on the TV. And I was like, now it's in the evening.

And all the news were just my face. And I've been doing some interviews up to the Danish Broadcasting Service, who was broadcasting the film in the evening. And my Twitter and Facebook exploded with messages. I had like more than 4,000 messages on Twitter. I actually deleted every single one of them because it was impossible. And now it's still people, new people are following me on Twitter and Instagram because it's been broadcasted in several countries around the world all the time.

And I have a few hate messages, of course. And they are located around Spain, funny enough. And a few from the U.S. actually, as well. There's some hardcore, diehard North Korean supporters in America. Huh. Yeah. I guess it's a large country. There's all kinds of weirdos.

You'd think this would be a place where they'd know better. One of them is from San Diego. I know. And the other one is from the Midwest. And the one from the Midwest is a lady. She wrote me, I've been talking with her online for years, you know, in messages and groups with North Korea. And she's always been very polite to me.

and great comrades as we like to call herself. And then she said, well, you got your F minutes of fame. But remember, the internet will never forget and we'll get you someday. And another one was like, well, you're the biggest clown on earth. And then he wrote, I got more money than you. And I was like, weird flex. Yeah, what has the money to do with this? I did it for free.

I haven't got even $1 to doing this project. So for me, it's got nothing to do with the money. But, you know, they just react. in anger. Also, weird of a hardcore socialist supporter of North Korea to be talking about how much money he has. It's not very socialist of him. No, exactly. I think even some of those people supporting North Korea don't know the difference between the socialist and a capitalist. I think these are just sort of contrarians that are having a bad life. Yeah. And they go, I'm going to vote for the underdog. They don't really understand or even have the emotional

intelligence to be able to understand what they're supporting. Actually, there were one message which I I thought a bit about it was now it was my fault that the sanction will go even harder to North Korea and the people would starve even more. And I was like, well, maybe, but still they will always have food from World Health organizations and stuff like that. They won't change that, but all the other things will probably be changed. And the worst is before the mold premier in the cinema, I got an email and it was from United Nations. And I was like, what? It was after I revealed it to Alejandro between there and

the Premier. And then I think somebody is making a joke with me. And then they attached a picture of me standing at that annual meeting with this model of the hotel in North Korea. And actually, I'm in the report from September of United Nations, a UN panel of North Korea. There's a picture of me and the report facilitating this factory in Uganda, in African countries, and they just caught my eyes. But that picture was probably online for three, four hours. But that was enough for United Nations to somehow snap that picture. When I look back now, it's strange that I haven't been contacted by any intelligence at all. It's very strange. It's very strange. Even though I went to the U.S. as well.

But on the other hand, maybe they knew what I was doing. They have hacked email, I don't know, and just follow off the side and said, okay, if it's good dangers, we just get him out or something like that. I don't know. I wouldn't count on that. I mean, maybe they do have access to some of your stuff, sure, but they still don't know who you recognize and what people's names are. I mean, that's what they have me doing. Like, hey, do you recognize this person? Oh, yeah, she's the daughter of this person.

Okay, they already know that, but they're just making sure and they want to see, does she give a different name when she's dealing with foreigners? She gives a different name when she's dealing with tourists. They wouldn't know that because they have to talk to you about that. So I'm not so sure why that hasn't happened yet. It's also very possible that after podcasts and media and things like this, there are a lot of intelligence agents and special forces and United Nations staff that listen to and watch the Jordan Harbinger show.

So it's possible that this is something they'll go, hey, you guys are on this, right? Yeah, maybe we'll have a chat with them. I mean, that wouldn't surprise me at all. It seems like they should absolutely be working with you on this. I mean, look, this is North Korea trying to avoid sanctions on fuel and weapons and promoting instability across the world, contributing to a genocide in Syria by trying to buy missile systems and chemical weapons.

I mean, this is a very serious allegation for which you have plenty of evidence and proof. So it's not just a bunch of hearsay. Every night there is approximately 25 million North Korean inhabitants going to bed, and they go to bed with fear and hunger, and they wake up in the morning with fear and hunger. I would love to be one of the persons who could smash a hole through the whole border to bring in justice to the North Korean people, because no people should live like they do in North Korea.

One of the things that I always get back to is there could be 10,000 of people walking on the street, and you see sort yourself, they don't speak with each other. It's like they fear each other to talk. You should not live in a country like this. But I know they will say our great leader to take care of us. And without him, we will live in a really bad country. So I really hope that I could be one of the people helping that to happen one day. It will be very difficult to do in that point because you can't just put those.

I don't think you can, you know, reunificate northern south. I think there would be too much hate actually from the North still, and it needs to be a really long way to do and bring in a normal country if we can use those words because it's such a bad place to be. This is the Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest, Ulrich Larson, The Mole. We'll be right back. Thanks so much for listening to and supporting the show.

We spend a ton of time creating it. I love that you're as crazy about it as I am. Further, your support of our advertisers is what keeps us going. Please do consider supporting those. who support us. We put all the deals, all the discount codes, everything, all in one place. Jordanharbinger.com slash deals is where you can find that. Jordanharbinger.com slash deals. Again, do consider supporting those who support this show. Don't forget, we have worksheets for many episodes. If you want some of the drills, exercises, or takeaways from a lot of the guests here

on the show, we put those all in one easy place as well. That link is in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast. And now for the rest of my conversation with Ulrich Larson, the mole. It's going to take full on at least a generation and it would take an international effort. It's where South Korea can't bear the brunt of this. We have to get help from China, the U.S., the United Nations. We have to build it. I mean, we have to build telephone lines and power lines and water, running water. We have to develop the infrastructure, build universities in an educational system that's not just propaganda about the leadership, that's actual knowledge and things like that. We have to start from scratch and then also make sure that the people are.

are gainfully employed and being trained. I mean, it's going to take a whole generation and then some to change all of that. I remember the same thing with Germany, that they are still actually problems in Germany and it's still, what, 32 years ago, because in East Germany, you had a job, you have a car, you have those things.

And in the West you had to work to have money and houses. So all those things, as you say, it could take generations. And East Germany and West Germany were a hell of a lot. lot more similar than North and South Korea, and they were separated for a lot less time. East Germany and West Germany, they had electricity in East Germany. They had running water in East Germany. They had an education system that wasn't too bad in East Germany. They had industry, heavy industry in East Germany. They had a lot of oppression, but they could write to people outside the country. They could make telephone calls. They could receive mail and parcels

from international destinations. I mean, it's different, but it's not a different universe. North Korea is a different universe, especially when compared to South Korea, the only thing they, one of the only things they have in common now is the language. And even that's different. Yeah, actually, yeah, that's right, because at Stokewood one person who said that if a South Korean goes to North Korea, it's very difficult to communicate because all those terms and slang you use now, they don't know what it means. And it's very formal. I know they have mobile phone in Pyongyang now. Finally, yeah.

Yeah, but they ask me. if I wanted a SIM card to my phone when I was there last time I said, I know I'm fine. I don't want to put anything from your thing into my telephone. I couldn't use it anyway. I could call inside North Korea, but to who guide with me the whole time anyway. And I couldn't call back home. Yeah, there's no internet for your phone.

There's no international cause. Now I think you can get some internet, but it's like, you know, you buy one gig for 20 euros or something like that, and it's limited. It doesn't really make any sense. How do you go from a decade undercover, multiple identities, I guess. You're still yourself, but not really, jet-setting with arms dealers or fake-arms dealers, well, fake and real arms dealers. How do you go back to your normal life after

that? Well, it's not so normal anymore because I get recognized on the street. I can't go out shopping without people watching. Denmark is a small country. Yeah. But, well, in the beginning, I was not aware of it, but when I started to, went into 2018, I could very see. from the river they start to editing in a bit also and okay when this comes out i'm not just a normal person anymore i'm a known person in denmark now and people are nice to me and wanted to have selfies and those kind of things very nice and want to say how brave i was and also many people say are still with your wife yeah did she beat you up or i say no no i'm still with my wife i love her a lot and hopefully she loves me just as much as i love her and my children but i was to my soccer

team, favorite soccer team, actually last week won the Danish championship for the first time in 16 years. And I was invited as a famous person in Denmark to speak on the line during the match and before the match about my relationships to the club. And I came all the way into the pitch when they had the trophy and stuff. So that's the kind of benefit I had. And then here, as I said earlier, I have to go out for a national tour in Denmark to tell my story. And hopefully I will go to Norway. right after and I'm planning to go to the U.S. as well to tell my story. I would love to see that. Are you worried that the North Korean agents might come after you?

I mean, they've assassinated their enemies abroad before for existing and not even doing anything against the regime. All right? Kim Jong-un had his brother murdered at an airport in Malaysia, and that guy wasn't even, he had no plans to go back to North Korea. He wasn't interested in going back to North Korea. He had nothing to do with North Korea anymore. and they went and killed him with a chemical weapon agent, chemical agent, in an airport in a public place.

I mean, that kind of has to keep you up at night, I would imagine. When the mole premiered, we went to a safe house, me and my family. Then, meanwhile, we had security doors and cameras of surveillance and all those kind of things. And when I go out in public, when people know I come, I'm going to have my bodyguard with me. And of course, the North Korean doesn't have a story, as I know, to go for foreign people outside North Korea, But of course, this is a bit different than what other people did. It was the first time for everything, Ulrich. Yeah, exactly.

And I have this agreement with my family. And if we're out in the shopping center or, you know, just out for a walk or out for dinner, if something people go to me and talk with me or, you know, getting anger with me, they should just walk away and do what they have to do, maybe call the police. And then I will try to handle myself. But of course, if I go out, I will always have to tell the Danish intelligence that will be in this place, then they will make a decision if they have to be there or not. But still now in Denmark, I have only been talking with people who were really

fascinated about my story. And I'm sure I could have beers for the rest of my life getting drunk each day for people offering me a free beer for what I did. So I just can't wait to get out and tell my story and all the things who was not in the mold. There's so many side stories and what I was thinking in those situations. how I reacted when I came home the jokes we did around I went out two times

to speak to people and then COVID in Denmark was completely shut it down but the people attending were just sitting with their open mouth and I could just speak for hours so you have to say hey the time is up now I could speak if I wanted to

but and I said well okay if you want ask me questions I just didn't I think we spent three and a half hours and I was supposed to do two hours because I took time to the people. And I think it's an important story to tell because this regime has to stop better yesterday than tomorrow because, yeah, as I'm not supposed to live in evilness like this.

And our time is up as well. I do wonder if there's any one thing that wasn't in the documentary where you said, look, this is just crazy and you have to hear this. Do we have time for one more anecdote? Yeah, it's a funny story. In Pyongyang, I was there with Mr. D.D. was in January. And it was minus, I don't know what it's in Fahrenheit, but it was minus 21 degrees Celsius. Really cold, yeah, either way. Yeah. The Lake Tatong River was frozen and out on the ice

where people bang in holes in the ice and sit fishing. Right. And Mr. James asked the first day, why are they sitting there? And we knew, of course, they were trying to find fish or something. And Mr. Kang said, well, they are just having a meeting. Ah, okay. Then the next day, and the next the day after we went past and people were still sitting there and then they said well James now I know why they are sitting there and then I was like oh stop it don't say you know what they are doing they're searching for food or something because that would offend the North Koreans and then he kept like this article break and he said well it's because their balls has frayed on to the ice so they can't get up until springtime and the funny part is Mr. Kang like

He wouldn't translate it. And I just, you know, bang him, you know, like this. He said, come on, just translate it. This is fun. And he just told it in Korean to, I don't know if it was an officer or something. And this officer was like, looking at him, looked out on the people. And then he was like, completely laughing. And then just grab his hand and grab his balls.

I would say, oh, no. And I was like, that was just like an icebreaker if you can use that word. But that was the humor was so important for me and James because we can keep it in turn, but you know also there's always a North Korean near you when you're in North Korea. Yeah, that's true. It's weird that they wouldn't admit it's ice fishing. I mean, people do that in the United States. Yeah. And they're not starving. They're just, they enjoy it. Yeah. Like, they could easily not lie. That's one thing I noticed about North Korea is they can easily not lie, and it would be totally fine, but they will choose to lie about something that is totally

innocuous because they just want to be damn sure that you don't have a negative impression of the place. But I think it was because there was so many people, I think. It was a a bit out of the city. And I think there was, it's hard to say, three, 400 people maybe. But of course I knew they were speaking together and might talking because, as they probably didn't do anyway, because they fear each other. But they were fishing. But, you know, they always sit down in this particular way. And Mr. Jameson came up with the idea that the ball was stuck on the ice because it was that cold. But yeah, there are so many, many crazy stories during the years.

And then there are all the bad stories, of course, in Uganda and how they treat people. But actually, one of the people from the government who attended in the meeting has been arrested. The Ugandan guys. Yeah, Ugandan guys. I think his name was Moses. Was he the real estate agent or whatever? No, he was from the government. Oh, the government, okay.

Lawyer or from the government. He's been arrested for fraud. So that's great. But I don't know about the real estate broker, but, you know, white people. people in Uganda, it could be really unconvened if you walk around alone because we were told not to walk with our phones in our hands or actually just keep our hands in the pocket on our belongings because, yeah, they would steal everything. And actually, in Jordan, when we came, we were four people in total.

And we had paid a lot of money for the visa. And then they said, well, they are a problem because normally four persons do not try. travel with the commercial airlines. They would go with a travel company or something to Jordan, but we came four men. Then we were asked to go into an office. And in that office was like you see in the old movie was a chair and a table. And there was a phone with a line on like real old school. And he was a question, what are you doing here?

Oh, we are going to have business with Mr. Suzuki or something. Then suddenly he phoned the ring on the table. And then they speak a rabbit. or what they speak. And he said, oh, okay, welcome to Jordan. I was like, okay. Then it was because we have hired a security guy. In Denmark, we hired a Jordanian security guy

who's been a member of the Jordanian intelligence service. And he saw that our plane has landed one hour ago, and he was, why are they not still here? And he just called in and verified for us. So we just got up. But to be in that situation, not knowing what's going to happen, except that we might have something Amazu could relate to the North Koreans and could relate to Mr. Dusuki.

And if they open up our backs with the cameras and stuff, it would be a bad place to get caught as well. Oh, yeah. Yeah, so they were interrogating you in the Jordanian airport, and then as soon as the things started getting heavy, the phone rings, and it's the intelligence guys saying, hey, we're waiting for these guys. What's the hold up? Oh, okay, sorry, yeah, let him go, let them go.

Yeah, and then we just had a, it is a fantastic country. It's so beautiful. Jordan as well. But yeah, criminals are all over. Follow the money. Follow the money, man. I've got some thoughts on this episode, but before I get into that, here's a preview with ethical hacker Harry Hirsty about how vulnerable our election systems are to being hacked by enemies of the state and why we should all be concerned no matter what team we're rooting for. On this episode, Harry takes us through how secure or insecure our voting technology really is and explains how we found the vulnerability, what's been fixed so far and what hasn't, and what we as citizens can do about

this to ensure the integrity of our elections and of our democracy. It doesn't matter how much money you spend to have the best military if the war is fought in cyberspace and election hacking, because that's the way you can influence the government and that's the way you can influence the minds of the people. Somehow Al Gore had negative 16,000 votes in Florida. Only the totals for the presidential race were affected, so it wasn't just a the machine failure. The thing about this explanation afterwards was that the minus 16,000 was malfunction

of the memory card, not possible. That memory card doesn't know how to make negative numbers. At least the official explanation given at the time, not possible. Something else happened. I have always said that when you are examining any kind of device, whether it's an ATM, whether it's a life support system or voting machine, you always find vulnerabilities. This is not just to get a specific outcome in that election, it's to chip away democracy itself, correct? I mean, it can be a nation state who wants to undermine democracy, but it can be a religious group.

It can be all kinds of disruptors who just want to create chaos. Is it always Russia, or is that something that happens from other countries too? There are certain big countries, Russia, China, Iran, which are the big three, and after that, North Korea and the usual suspects underneath. but it's never only one country. Email, FTP with no security. These are the common methods to send the most mission-critical programming from the private company, which might be out of state, to the local county who is putting it into the machines.

And it is whoever controls that data controls the election. For more, including why electronic voting machines are more vulnerable to fraudulent manipulation than mail-in ballots, check out episode 405 on the Jordan Harbinger Show with Harry Hirsty. An unbelievable story. I mean, there's a lot we could have gone into my impressions of North Korea. I've done a whole episode on that. That's actually two episodes on that.

Episode 435 and 436, I've talked about my time in the DPRK in North Korea extensively. One thing that struck me was just how thin the veneer is in that place. Like, you'd be eating this lavish meal, and then you'd poke a hole in a fish that you didn't want to eat. because it looked a little bit outside your comfort zone, let's say. And then that same fish with the same hole would show up on a plate two or three days later. Or, sadly, you'd leave something half eaten on your plate and then you'd peek into the kitchen and you'd see the staff eating it as fast as they could before washing the plates. There's a lot of sort of tragic tales that come, just small little things that you see when you're there

for long enough. And we'll have to have Ulrich back of the show because offline we had a couple of other crazy stories, like a very close call at the shooting range. where they found out their tour guide could basically hit the bullseye blindfolded and could do all these crazy taekwondo kicks. Some tour guide, huh? One thought I had about this episode that I wanted to ask but didn't was that Mr. James, right, he travels to Beijing to meet with North Korean arms dealers. But at that point, right, you're not really in Kansas anymore. I mean, you've got to be worried about Chinese intelligence who, by all accounts, are very competent intelligence and counterintelligence agents.

And they're shining a light on you guys, right? they probably don't want North Korean arms dealers doing business all the time in China. They certainly don't want some chubby dude from Spain playing 007. They don't want a retired chef in there facilitating the whole thing with an actor from Denmark who's supposed to be some kind of billionaire. I mean, this was just, in my opinion, a very near miss. Chinese Secret Services are the real deal. These guys are no joke, and they were just toyed with.

I think they're going to be pretty pissed about this. And I'd be much more scared of Chinese intelligence than I would be North Korean arms dealers or security forces or intelligence. Big thank you to all Rick. The Mole will link to him in the show notes. Please use our website links if you buy books from any guest on this show. That links work internationally. They work for audio books as well.

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