January 1st 2025.
It was a cold winter morning in 2017 when Ulrich Larsen, a regular family man from Denmark, found himself in an unexpected situation. He was in a luxurious conference room under a North Korean factory on the outskirts of Pyongyang. The officials of the reclusive regime were enjoying karaoke and drinks, while Larsen and his business partner were finalizing an illegal weapons deal.
Recalling the moment, Larsen shared with 9news.com.au in an interview from his home, "I was afraid that I might never return to Denmark. I was sitting in a steel basement in the middle of North Korea with no access to a phone or satellites or anything." Larsen had been working undercover for 10 years to expose North Korea's illegal drug and weapons trading. He had been filming the entire operation.
"It was a risky situation, especially because there was a lot of alcohol involved when you are with them in North Korea," Larsen remembered. The pressure was on for him and his partner to maintain their cover while the drinks kept flowing. "We had to stick to our basic backstories to avoid any mistakes," he added.
During the banquet, one of the officials, a major figure in North Korea's weapons industry, started to sing a patriotic pop anthem. Larsen explained, "Every six to seven words were about their leaders - Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il, or Kim Jong Un." While the official was singing, Larsen's partner, posing as a billionaire weapons buyer named "Mr. James," was signing the contracts worth millions of dollars for missile systems. In return, the North Koreans asked Larsen to sing a song of his own.
"They suggested Celine Dion's 'My Heart Will Go On', but I wasn't up for that challenge," Larsen chuckled. Instead, he sang a Danish children's song that he usually sang to his kids at bedtime. "One of the officials stood behind me and put his arm over my chest, saying, 'I felt that song came straight from your heart'," Larsen shared.
The Long Road to Pyongyang
It all started in 2010 when Larsen joined forces with director Mads Brügger to make a documentary about an unusual group of Danes called the Korean Friendship Association of Denmark. Larsen described them as a Monty Python-style group devoted to North Korean ideology. He thought it would be amusing to travel with them to North Korea and see their reaction to the country, making an absurd documentary.
As Larsen became more involved with the KFA, he befriended the head of the European wing, a Spanish national named Alejandro Cao de Benos, who had his own connections to the regime. While cultivating their friendship, Larsen secretly recorded their conversations on hidden cameras. It was then that Cao de Benos mentioned that he was looking for investors for North Korea, despite international sanctions.
Larsen and the film's director, Brügger, came up with a plan to create a fake investor, a charismatic billionaire named Mr. James, who was played by actor Jim Latrache-Qvortrup. With Mr. James, Larsen was invited into the heart of North Korea to conduct a weapons deal at the invitation of Cao de Benos.
The North Korean regime's main sources of revenue, which are still under heavy international sanctions, are the illegal weapons and drug trade. What had initially begun as a documentary poking fun at the Korean Friendship group soon turned into a shocking expose of North Korea's covert activities.
In the documentary, titled "The Mole," Larsen and Mr. James traveled to Uganda with a North Korean delegation to plan a deal for an arms factory. Larsen recorded hundreds of hours of conversations, revealing damning evidence of how North Korea was circumventing international sanctions.
After gathering the evidence they needed, Larsen and Brügger finally revealed to their contacts that they had been playing them for almost a decade.
After the Bombshell
When the documentary was released, Larsen became an overnight celebrity. "I went to bed on Saturday evening, and on Sunday morning, I was all over the news, which completely changed my life," he shared. For the first year, Larsen was accompanied by a former Danish Navy Seal as a security precaution. When he traveled to South Korea, he was met by members of the country's intelligence service.
"It was a bit awkward for me. I'm just a regular guy, but I'm also aware that I might have upset some people," Larsen admitted. The true purpose of his undercover activities was kept secret from his family for almost a decade. "It was a shock for my wife when she found out," he said. "She thought I was just traveling around with filmmakers to take care of cameras."
Larsen's children's school parents were also concerned about his activities, with one parent even fearing that their school would be targeted by North Korean missiles. Now, Larsen shares his story around the world, and he continues to be concerned about North Korea's involvement in the conflict in Ukraine, which he had predicted over a year ago.
When asked about his next projects, Larsen said he couldn't reveal much, jokingly saying, "I'm undercover at 9News." However, he did mention that he was working on a book about his experience infiltrating North Korea.
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