(CBS) In their first epic in 1978, Dresnok played the brutal American commander of a POW camp.

"I don’t consider it a propaganda movie. I took great honor in doing it," Dresnok said.

“And that was how he found salvation in North Korea is that he played the part of an evil American,” Gordon says.

“And he’s the John Wayne of North Korea,” Bonner adds.

“The John Wayne of North Korea playing the villain,” Simon remarks, laughing.

And Dresnok enjoyed becoming a celebrity. "We walk around with him and people say, 'Come here, come here,'" explains Gordon. "He’d never have done that in Virginia, you know? He wasn’t exactly Hollywood material."

Beyond starring in dozens of movies, he translated the Great Leader's writings into English. He taught some English as well.

"I've taught in a foreign language college in 1986. I poured all my knowledge and effort to help them, to teach them. Some of the places in the educational fields, they invite me to give a lecture once in a while," Dresnok says.

In North Korea, Dresnok finally got what he had never had in America: a family. He married an eastern European woman and had two sons. But his wife died young. Then, he married the daughter of a Korean woman and an African diplomat; she and Dresnok have a six-year-old.

The British filmmakers were stunned by his eldest son James, who’s studying at Pyongyang’s elite foreign language college.

"My father is American and I've got American blood. But as I born here I consider myself as Korean," James told the filmmakers.

"He speaks and acts like a Korean. He speaks English in a Korean accent. It’s a very strange thing," says Gordon.

"When we interviewed him he says you know, you want peace in this world. I don’t understand what all this war is going on—or “wer” as he calls it. I would like to be in a position where we can we can stop all this," Bonner adds.

"I start to learn English to become a diplomat. I’d like to make the world which has no war at all. And no terror at all," James told the film team.

“He thinks of himself as Korean. His friends are Korean. But you mentioned, he doesn’t want to marry a Korean woman,” Simon asks Gordon.

“Yeah. I mean, that’s what he was saying. But you know, his best friend, who’s Korean is like, ‘All the Korean girls love him,’ you know,” he replies laughing.

Gordon says James is a popular kid. “I mean they love him. And you know, he’s got blond hair and blue eyes.”

Now his father's days are pretty dull—fishing, and smoking, and drinking. The government provides a small apartment and a monthly stipend, but even in the capital, where only the privileged are allowed to live, blackouts are frequent, and running water seldom runs. All homes have a built-in radio speaker that pipes out propaganda. The radio can be turned down, but not off.

"There is this propaganda everywhere in North Korea," explains Gordon. "You walk down the street, there’s all sorts of revolutionary music that will just play out from loud speakers. Down the escalators into the metro, propaganda is playing. If you’re in the fields, you’ll have news read to you. And that’s all part and parcel of their propaganda machine."

The wide streets of the capital see little traffic and surprisingly few bicycles. The government believes bikes give people too much mobility and make them too hard to keep track of.

Produced By Robert G. Anderson and Casey Morgan
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