Becoming Mr James: Undercover Inside North Korea

Jim Latrache grew up poor in Denmark, joined the French Foreign Legion as a young man, and spent years as a high-end cocaine dealer to Copenhagen's wealthy elite before a prison sentence gave him five and a half years to reconsider his life choices.

What came next nobody could have predicted.

When Danish filmmaker Mads Brügger needed someone to pose as a shady arms dealer willing to negotiate illegal weapons and drug deals with North Korean regime officials, he needed someone who could be utterly convincing in the role. Someone with the background, the nerve, and the complete absence of fear that the job required, he called Jim.

Under the alias Mr James, Jim travelled to Uganda, Spain, Norway and deep into North Korea itself, meeting with regime officials, sitting across tables from people willing to discuss Scud missiles and methamphetamine factories, all while wearing hidden cameras and knowing that if his cover was blown, people have been killed for considerably less.

The result was The Mole, one of the most extraordinary undercover documentaries ever made. But behind the footage is the story of the man who lived it what it actually felt like to walk into the world's most dangerous dictatorship wearing a wire, and what it takes to come out alive.

Jims books can be found here

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