An actual North Korean spy story that gets deserved to be made into a TV show/movie: the story of Muhammad Kansu, AKA Jeong Soo-il
Jeong (affectionately called Prof. Kansu) was an ethnic Korean-Chinese man who was born to ethnic Korean parents in Manchuria and later attained North Korean citizenship in ‘63. He was trained as a spy in the late 1970s.
He first went to Beirut, Lebanon, to launder his identity and attain Lebanese citizenship, and after much travelling (Tunisia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea) he managed to create an identity as a half Lebanese, half Filipino researcher who could safely enter South Korea.
He first started by learning Korean (which he obvi did not need) at the Yonsei Korean Academy as part of his academic research on Korea’s role in the Silk Road, and to this day he remains the foremost Korean scholar on Silk Road studies.
He was named professor of Dankook University in ‘94 and became a much beloved teacher to his students, who thought of him as a kindly foreign professor who spoke shockingly good Korean.
He was caught faxing 🤦🏻‍♀️ information from a hotel in Seoul to the NK embassy in Beijing in ‘96, which was when he was revealed as a spy working for NK. Amusingly, the info he sent to NK for over a decade was almost useless, harmless material from major newspapers.
He was initially sentenced to death. However, his South Korean wife persuaded him to submit a conversion statement (switching fealty from NK to SK), his “espionage” was judged to be toothless, and his research was recognized as impeccable and valuable. He was pardoned in 2000.
Someone said “if this was a drama about a PhD student desperately trying to hold on to their academic career and get their degree after finding out his “Tunisian” adviser was actually a NK spy, twitter would have responded very differently”
Imagine speaking 12 languages but you have to pretend you only speak like, 7 because 5 of those languages were from the Communist bloc lmao

Also imagine being so valuable to ACADEMIA that you literally get pardoned from treason 😭

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More from @gatamchun

30 Dec 21
Back in the US today btw where defamation laws are QUITE different 💅🏻
The response from Clien, after JTBC sent a “we will sue you if you keep saying mean things” statement
I’m actually curious how they think this will play out for them if they follow through. The cognitive dissonance between “we have freedom of expression!” and “we will sue you if you criticize!” cannot be lost upon them, surely?
Read 41 tweets
29 Dec 21
How is a twitter account going to overturn a court dismissal of an injunction what the fuck are you saying
They really are 13 year olds jesus christ
I think we’ve established that I have a hard time when it comes to ignoring such extreme stupidity
Read 9 tweets
29 Dec 21
*extreme “cheese is under the sauce” voice*

The law does not decide whether something is historical distortion, or offensive, or stupid, or insensitive.
The law simply guarantees FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION because South Korea is a fucking democracy.
The same people who declared “The Blue House personally approved this drama” are also the ones saying “we won” because a court ruled that a broadcast station is allowed to broadcast their drama

I’m sorry do you WANT South Korea to become an authoritarian state again??
I mean I guess that’s why y’all are supporting this drama so hard, because the idea of South Korea sliding back into authoritarian rule is so ✨aesthetic✨ or something for you?????
Read 22 tweets
27 Dec 21
What goes through your mind when you do this? Image
If I’m “terrorizing your timeline” the mute/block buttons are right there, learn how to fucking use twitter
“I’m gonna be rude and then demand you retweet some random thoughts I had about Park Bom” this is some r/choosingbeggars shit lmao
Read 4 tweets
27 Dec 21
Excerpt from longform article on Snowdrop
“One person who identified themselves as a production staff fir Snowdrop said, “the drama is made with the perception that ppl at the NSA/ANSP were also normal people.””

ilyosisa.co.kr/mobile/article… Image
“There is some satire about the government regime of the time, but they’re not portrayed as very bad people. In the latter part of the drama there’s some story related to the red scare manipulation incident, but the drama doesn’t have a strongly negative view of the NSA/ANSP.”
The thing is - I actually believe you can make a media work about the humanity of people who worked for the NSA/ANSP/police at this time. PEPPERMINT CANDY is one example.
But in order to do it, I also believe you have to have a very, very clear understanding of history.
Read 12 tweets
20 Dec 21
Then why do Snowdrop fans keep threatening to sexually assault him!!!!
Also will never get over this person trying to sicc BTS fandom on me
“She makes jokes about bts”
Read 6 tweets

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