They Chose China

After this post yesterday, I realized that I almost nothing about North Korea except for jokes about "Dear Leader" and things that I had heard on The Bugle...

So, I scoured the internets, looking at Wikipedia and following up on the places that they linked to.

I kept coming back to James Joseph Dresnok. I find his story to be fascinating in a way that is disturbing as well as being so foreign (it is okay if you need to groan right now, I understand, and it isn't a pun) to my thinking.

His story (including the part about him being a film star in North Korea) led me to the story of the twenty two UN soldiers who did not repatriate after the Korean War. I never thought about this, but of course some people would stay.

As often happens, this led me to watching a documentary called "They Chose China" which left me feeling uncomfortable but...I understood why some would want to stay. It was 1954 and if you are of African heritage and thinking about returning to Memphis, would you think about staying in some place that claims equality for all as a basis of their social experiment?