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Chapter 1: What led Jim Latrache to become an undercover operative in North Korea?
So when I began creating this series, I was searching far and wide for stories of incredible survival, and I'm sure you'll agree that we've certainly found many of those.
And at the very start of this project, I said these situations are ones that people either found themselves in unwillingly, such as Michael Thexton and the 1986 Pan Am plane hijacking, or Barry Hoffs and his 10-year ordeal in an Indian prison. And then, well, then there's those who have actively placed themselves in potentially highly dangerous and life-threatening situations.
And today's guest, well, he most certainly falls smack bang in that category.
War in my mind. I'm trying to fight a war in my mind. I don't know who's the winner tonight, but it ain't me.
Chapter one. I was there to work on my fear. Hello? Here he is. Can you see me? I can't see you, no.
Let's see.
There he is. I feel like I should have the North Korean national anthem ready just to play on your arrival, sir. North Korea. You only have to say the name and it evidently invokes images of a brutal regime, a country controlled by a dictatorship that stretches back to 1948, when the founder and first supreme leader Kim Il-sung took power. It's a country that is shrouded in secrecy.
And while some mock the regime and its leaders, of course, the now Kim Jong-un, there are plenty of people, including the country's own, that suffer at the brutality of those in power.
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Chapter 2: How did Jim's upbringing influence his life choices?
North Korea is a country that you can travel to. However, it is strongly advised against by practically all Western governments to do so. Should you decide to go against this advice and indeed make the trip to the DPRK, then be warned. You better be an obedient tourist, because if not, well... Not even the great leader's own brother is safe from retribution.
Entering Kuala Lumpur Airport in the grey suit, this CCTV appears to show Kim Jong-nam. He continues into the busy departures hall, where an audacious assassination is apparently about to take place.
So what on earth possessed a man from Denmark by the name of Jim Le Trichet to not only go to North Korea, but to do so undercover as a billionaire arms dealer looking to expose this regime? Well, before we even get there, we still have to talk about his time in the French Foreign Legion, cocaine trafficking and two stints in prison.
Yes, if this was the script for a Hollywood movie, you'd be laughed right out of the boardroom. However, this is not fiction. This is the life of the man that the North Koreans would come to know as Mr James. From reading your book, which again is amazing, would it be fair to say that you had quite a tumultuous upbringing to say the least?
Yeah, yeah, you can say that. I think it took a crazy turn also during to the time because in the early 80s, you were rather like everybody else. You were a troubled kid. So I have ADHD and I'm dyslexic. I think my only crime at that time was that I couldn't shut up in class. It's not like I come from a broken home. I always had food on the tables and stuff like that.
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Chapter 3: What experiences did Jim have while serving in the French Foreign Legion?
I think the big game changer was when I was 12. My teacher convinced my mom it would be in everybody's best interest if I came to a boarding school for troubled kids. It was my... How can you say it? The start for a crazy life in the wrong direction, if you could say.
Yeah. I mean, you actually say in the book, from the age of 12 onward, you hated every single day of your life.
Yeah. Yeah, that's right. I mean... I don't think it's healthy for a kid in such an early age to be told that you're not like everybody else. And if you take a guy who has ADHD and put them in a regular classroom, they will fail because that's not the way they learn.
And if you are exposed to things that you're not good at continually, your self-esteem becomes lower and lower, and then you start to have low thoughts about yourself.
You know, you also talk about at one point, did you get taken in by a family who were adopting sort of kids from all sorts of backgrounds?
Yeah, I mean, after the boarding school, I went to a school home for boys. And after that, I had some foster parents, yes.
So can you explain that whole foster parent situation for us? I mean, because, you know, obviously most people who get fostered by other parents means that they don't have parents, but you did still have your mother.
Yeah. So the thing was that this was not like they adopt you. It's just like you live with some new parents. And this guy, he was actually the first person in my life I actually respected because he My entire life, people have been yelling at me, being quite rough at me. And here was a guy who actually saw everything in another perspective.
Because you have to understand, I think in Denmark around the 70s, it was illegal to hit kids in schools and in any kind of institutions. But in those homes, that rule was a little blurry. That guy I lived with, he used to be the headmasters of some really rough homes. And he was quite pissed about that a lot of the staff didn't honor the new law.
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Chapter 4: How did Jim transition from soldier to cocaine dealer?
And I thought, okay, this could be a good thing to take the bandage off one time for all.
Jim, that's one hell of a bandage ripoff to go from being afraid of everything to thinking, oh, I'll go and become a legionnaire.
Yeah. As I said, when you have ADHD, you're quite spontaneous.
Oh.
But overcoming his fears wasn't the only driving factor to head off and join an army stooped in history. He was also escaping the Danish weather.
You know, in Denmark, we have shitty weather nine months a year. And it's cold. I don't like the cold. So I thought, okay, because I'm this generation who grew up with Jacques-Claude Van Damme. So I had seen Jacques-Claude Van Damme. He had done two movies about the French Foreign Legion. So I thought, I mean, everything I saw there was in the desert.
And what I could have done, I could have gone to the library and opened my book. I didn't. I just put my face in Jacques-Claude Van Damme. And And I realised that perhaps I should have gone to the library because the first four months of my training was in the fucking French pioneers and never free so much in my life.
It was horrible. So a young Jim is off on a new adventure, set on conquering his fears of the world around him. Signing up for the Legionnaires in Paris, he soon heads off to the south of France. At that time, 300 men would apply each week, with only 30 being chosen.
Jim was one of those 30 and was soon thrown into a rigorous training course for four months, which he says taught him some extremely valuable lessons.
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Chapter 5: What challenges did Jim face while dealing drugs in Copenhagen?
No, I never learned to sing. I never learned it. I mean, imagine you have a company, 50 soldiers, more than 50% from Eastern Europe, speaking French with a heavily dialect. Even there, you're the only one that asked to shut the fuck up. And you have to understand, I was not there to become a pro-soldier. I was there to work with my fear. The French Foreign Legion is stooped in history.
First forming in the 1800s, its selection process is notoriously tough, and men from all over the world each year take on the challenge to join its ranks. So Jim was slowly using his time as a legionnaire to conquer his fears. one of which was jumping, as he puts it, from anything higher than around three metres.
So if you're afraid of jumping from heights, not even great heights, naturally, when you get the choice of your regiment within the French Foreign Legion... So therefore it made sense to sign up for the paratroopers.
Yeah, of course. Why not? And you first had a three-week course... where you learn because the parachute you use is round. And that means you hit the ground quite heavily, quite hard. And so you have to like make a roll when you hit the ground. Yeah. Again, because of my coordination is not that good. I never really learned to do that proper.
Chapter 6: How did Jim's criminal activities lead to his arrest?
So the first time we went up to a plane because in the end of those three weeks, uh, training, we should do seven jumps over two days. I remember that, uh, When we were ready to go up in that plane, I mean, I didn't feel good, but I thought, okay,
will come of course that you will get over it but again i thought okay if i should be the last one to jump out then i have to stand in the plane and think about oh when is my turn when is it my turn and when is my turn so okay what about if i'm the first one so i moved myself up so i i was the first one who came up and it's like a hercules so you go up in the back
And you attach yourself in the ceiling because the parachute opens automatically. If you can imagine, you have a backpack on and then you have a bag over your parachute. You attach it to a line in the plane. So when you jump out, it pulls the bag off and the parachute comes out. I was ready. We all sat down. The plane took off.
And in the heights of between 300 and 350 meters, they open the door. Just that is fucked up. And you have to imagine you fly with like 300 kilometers per hour, everything in you say this is just stupid. So an adjutant, that's the rank of the soldier, he just stood in the door, he took a doll with a parachute, threw it out and that's to test like the wind direction and stuff like that.
and that is on he he said he said okay stand up we stood up he said to me okay come and stand in the door there's a red light and a green lamp and right now it's red when it becomes green you jump i said yeah yeah okay how hard can that be and i was standing there and i remember while standing there i was like this is such a bad idea i mean everything is in you say you should not jump.
The light turns green and I froze. So this guy just kicked me in the back. So I just fly out of the plane. And that was my first jump. And I hit the ground like a bag of potatoes, just like bam. And I did three more jumps that day. I did three jumps the other day, so that was seven. And I realized, nope, nope, nope. You will never learn to enjoy that.
So at no point did you suddenly go, this is exhilarating. I love this. I'm going to keep doing this.
No, no, I hated. I have done 21 jump in the Legion and I hated every one of them. I will tell the last 14, I was drunk every time. I kept a six packs of beer under my bed. So when we were going to jump, I just like, all right. Keep me, bam, bam, bam, bam, drank those. So my nerve would come landing on the ground. That was the part I hated.
Because first it's just like, you jump out and just that is crazy. Like, will it open? Okay, okay, fine.
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Chapter 7: What insights did Jim gain during his time in prison?
Fuck, it's open. And when you're up there, it's like, in less than one minute, You will hurt yourself badly when you hit the ground. And then you pick up your stuff. Yeah, that was horrible. But I learned so much else. I learned to speak French as well.
Yeah. Well, there's a positive. Absolutely incredible. But you never actually saw any sort of form of war, did you, or any sort of actual combat?
No, no, no. Luckily, I didn't. At that time, I was sad I didn't because that would have been the ultimate test of meeting your fear because what is more frightening than being in a war situation? But today, I'm really, really glad I didn't.
Chapter 2. I didn't see what I was doing as that bad. So Jim's time in the Legionnaires would come to an end and he headed back home. He describes that time as therapy for him and helped him to get his head straight and overcome a lot of the fears he'd carried with him at a younger age. When he returns home, he gets himself a job as a telemarketer, of all things.
But as I'm sure you can imagine, it's not long before the lure of adventure is calling, and he heads off overseas. Spending time in the party scene of Ibiza is where Jim would try his first drug at the age of 21. Eventually, he makes his way to Tenerife, where he gets a job in a bar.
And it's while working in this bar that he would make a contact, a contact that would eventually lead him down the path to becoming a very big player in the world of cocaine trafficking. However, it didn't just happen overnight.
At that point, I had no vision of being a criminal or selling drugs. The thing was, for many years, I didn't see myself as a criminal. Because after Spain, I went home to Denmark and the whole electronic era started. And in the beginning, it was just because I bought drugs for me and my friends. So we could take it when we went out. And due to I'm quite extrovert, it was always me getting it.
And I would call the guy I was getting it from. He said, listen, if you buy a little bit more, you get it cheaper. And in that way, my own stuff started to be free and I made a little bit more money. And then it was just like more and more people found out I had it. And that's actually how it started.
I think it was first when I stopped working that I thought, oh, I guess this is what I'm doing now.
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Chapter 8: How did Jim's undercover mission in North Korea unfold?
But at any stage, did you think about giving up? Because I'm sure you were making a fair amount of money. Did you get to a point where you went, you know what? I've got enough cash here. I might just call. I've been lucky. Let me call it quits.
Yeah, I mean, that would be a smart thing to do. But... The thing is, I didn't have an implant. The reason why I got caught was because at one point my connection outside Denmark was caught and then I started to buying until I found a new one from a guy in Denmark and that was how it all started. I broke my own rules and he was importing a lot of stuff.
So it was a big case about 50 kilos of cocaine. Yeah, they wanted to charge me for 8.7 kilos of cocaine. In the end, I was sentenced for 1.6 kilos and I had a sentence for five and a half year in prison.
So Jim is arrested, convicted and sentenced to just over five years in prison, although he says at the time it really didn't bother him. In fact, it didn't even make him quit his day job.
While I was a criminal, we had a saying saying, if you can't do the time, don't do the crime. If you have been punished your entire life, punishment doesn't work on you.
Yeah.
It doesn't. I mean, look at the United States. They have some of the hardest punishment. It's like 2 million people in prison in the United States.
Yeah, it's the highest incarceration rate in the entire world.
Exactly. And it's actually some of the hardest prisons you have. So it doesn't work. And that was the same with me. So no, there was no time that I was thinking that I should stop being a criminal. So I continued while I was in prison.
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