Retired Danish chef Ulrich Larsen cannot even explain to himself what made him take up a double life as a North Korean spy.
“I don’t really know myself. I’ve actually always been a pretty ordinary guy,” says the retired cook who lives in a suburb of Copenhagen with his family. Then along came North Korea.
Larsen is the subject of a new documentary whose revelations have reached all the way to the leaders of the United Nations.
The documentary – Muldvarpen: Undercover i Nordkorea (The Mole: Undercover in North Korea), made by Mads Brugger – tells of how North Korea’s leaders sought to circumvent UN sanctions by offering weapons and drugs in exchange for oil and cash.
According to the documentary, Larsen’s interest in the country is sparked after he watches a documentary film called Det Rode Kapel (The Red Chapel) – which was widely criticised in North Korea.
He then decides to join the Danish-Korean Friendship Association, although he feels its members are boring and a bit odd. Nonetheless, though Larsen is pretty quiet, he is soon promoted within the organisation.
He winds up meeting the chairman of the Spain-based Korean Friendship Association (KFA), a Spaniard with aristocratic roots who is particularly committed to North Korea’s cause. Larsen becomes the man’s confidante, and eventually they travel to North Korea together, with the help of Brugger.
Despite the considerable risks involved, the meetings are recorded with hidden microphones and cameras.
Over the course of a decade, Larsen comes to live a double life that is a secret to everyone, even his wife. He infiltrates the KFA, meets a contact person in North Korea’s Ministry of Culture and gradually becomes closer and closer to the North Korean leadership, according to the film.
Ultimately, he and an alleged Scandinavian businessman – a former member of the Foreign Legion and a cocaine dealer who calls himself “Mr James” – wind up haggling with senior North Koreans over the sale of complex weapon systems and the manufacture of drugs, the documentary claims. Their plan is to build a secret factory in Uganda to build weapons and drugs.
Meanwhile, they also hatch a plan to make a million-dollar deal between North Korea, Mr James and a Jordanian oil trader.
All this presumably violates UN sanctions imposed over North Korea’s nuclear and missile program that expressly ban the trade in weapons and oil with Pyongyang, which has repeatedly been accused of circumventing the sanctions in recent years.
Brugger’s documentary was made in co-production with Norwegian radio NRK, Swedish station SVT and Britain’s BBC.
The work recalls The Interview, a Hollywood satire with James Franco and Seth Rogen that tells of a journalist recruited by the CIA to assassinate North Korean ruler Kim Jong-un during an interview. The movie led to considerable discord with Pyongyang in 2014, and there were threats that cinemas might be attacked.
What’s different in this case is that the documentary is not fictional, but shows real meetings and agreements.
Larsen is well-aware that he was exposing himself to considerable danger. “People are angry, there’s no doubt about that,” he told broadcaster DR, conceding that he had definitely annoyed people “and lied an unbelievable amount”.
The three-part series has triggered an international response.
Denmark and Sweden instructed their UN agencies to inform the United Nations Sanctions Committee about the documentary, while both countries’ foreign ministers also said that they were highly concerned about the content of the documentary and the activities shown in connection with North Korea.
The broadcaster DR reports that Larsen has already received an invitation to meet a UN committee of experts.
Ultimately, it is the Danes who draw the line, according to the documentary. “Mr James” goes underground – otherwise, he would have had to come up with the millions of dollars he promised.
And Larsen, the mole of the documentary’s title, comes clean, telling his wife who he kept in the dark for all those years.
He also comes clean to his Spanish mentor at KFA, who ends their contact. Larsen is seen drawing a deep breath in the documentary. “Would you like to be a mole again?” Brugger asks.
Not in that exact same way, answers Larsen. But he adds: “You should never say never.”
