In the New Yorker, Rebecca Mead tells the incredible story of Bobby Egan, restaurateur and Kim Jong-il’s man in Hackensack.
(HT to Hamel)
Vanity Fair, meanwhile, has an even longer piece on the man:
For more than 10 years, the United States has used an unlikely freelance connection to communicate with “axis of evil” member North Korea: Robert Egan, a barbecue-joint owner, former small-time criminal, and erstwhile F.B.I. informant from New Jersey. The author follows Egan into the wilds of Hackensack to reveal a mind-boggling story of espionage, covert diplomacy, and rib-lovin’ North Korean envoys.
And to think I just commented on how much North Korea resembles “The Sopranos.” Now we know why.
Seriously, though, read both pieces — this is one of most bizarre stories I’ve read in a long time.
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Wow. This makes the Chuck Barris stories seem boring by comparison.
I am sure it won’t be long before Hollywood comes knocking.
Like a mob familly? Nah… North Korea is just confucian, in the underhanded, big Chaebol kind of way. Just think of North Korea as one big giant, inefficiently run pre-1975 Chaebol.
I didn’t know Chaebol’s executed folks or had gulags.
Well… the you take the Chaebol mentality and multiply it by 10 or so…
Think of the Chairman of Hanwha Group. What if he was the sole authority of a nation and had to answer to no one? I think he would of done more then beat those guys with a steel pipe. They would of “disappeared” instead.
Holy crap, I know that place!
I have some friends who are members of an activist organization called PSALT (Prayer, Service, Action, Love and Truth for North Korea). They set up a local office in Hackensack only a few months ago. I gotta ask if they ate in the restaurant.
I am still waiting for a “I hung out with Kim Jong Nam” articles about KJI’s kids gettin’ euro education.
Well… Italians are peninsular people also. Big emotional types with a long history of civilization (and a tradition of byzantine natured personal relationships). Italians and Koreans also wear their emotions on their sleeves. Order and disorder is channeled through ancient rituals and modes of behavior. For Koreans it’s confucianism and for Italians it’s catholicism.
As they say, life is stranger than fiction, and, politics make strange bedfellows.
The money quote from the Vanity Fair article:
If the image of an ex-roofer with a rap sheet parsing American policy for the North Koreans gives you pause, you’d be missing a key point about the North Koreans, Egan says: “There’s no Harvard graduates in North Korea. No Rhode scholars. There’s no religion. That makes this job easy for me. I penetrated deep inside the North Korean family … I think that I can go up against some of the best intelligence guys in the world.”
From the New Yorker:
Egan says that the North Koreans are a much misunderstood people. They want normalized relations with the United States, a trading partnership, and aid, he says; they also want the United States not to interfere with any reunification process with South Korea, and for remaining U.S. troops to leave the D.M.Z. His efforts on the North Koreans’ behalf, he says, have always been aimed toward a peaceful end that would benefit both countries. As he put it, “How can you have fifty years of no diplomatic relations, no low-level diplomatic talks with a country that shares a peninsula with one of our best allies, South Korea, and that borders our biggest economic adversary and military adversary, China? How could that be?” Egan says that the very fact that the North Koreans choose to work with a guy like him shows how badly they want to get out of the hole of isolation in which they have buried themselves. “Look at what lengths the Koreans would go to—by using a guy with as little credibility as me, because there was nobody else there to support them,” he says. “That’s how much they wanted to normalize relations—that’s how much they wanted economic ties. They stooped to that level.”
I reckon this Egan understands the North Koreans a lot better than the CIA, FBI, NSA, and the State Department put together. I like this guy.
I’m always suspicious of people who claim loudly that they have some special understanding and inside relationship with the North Koreans.
Me, too. Sounds too much like Kim Myung Chul:
http://www.kimsoft.com/kimmc.htm
My favorite line from the New Yorker piece was this:
Wait, I thought Bush had already turned America into a gulag? Apparently, he’s still got some work to do.
Does that mean he doesn’t believe South Koreans are disciplined or hard working?
Robert said… “And to think I just commented on how much North Korea resembles “The Sopranos.” Now we know why.”
Had you read this before you made the observation?
[url]http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1642898,00.html?xid=rss-topstories[/url]
WangKon, before you go disseminating the half-arsed theories of peninsula peoples being fiery and emotional (ripped wholesale from anti-semite Rhie Won-bok) I would ask you to consider the Malaysians. And the Swedes.
Robert, did the observation of NK being like the Sopranos have anything to do with this article in Time?
http://www.time.com/time/magaz.....topstories
Does anyone feel concerned that egans lawyer who keeps him from violating the trading with the enemies act is a us army jag officer ltc mark winkler on Fort dix and is a franklin lakes attorney in nj. WHat if his attorney gets his livelyhood from providing egan with military seretes to trade with the norht koreans. Is anyone concerned
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