Original subtitles

They are pulling out sleds of hashish. You got them in the Philippines?

I'd like to buy a kilo, if you have them.

No problem.

You're insane.

Now I'm starting to feel the danger involved in this.

I need more.

They could have done anything they wanted with us.

It was disturbing.

I wanted to flee the scene.

Just healed myself then for the last bit.

Later, I would find out that the Philippines has a death sentence for

smuggling.

It's a painful reckoning to look back on just how

stupid one can be.

I was just out of university and I had a degree but wasn't using

it.

My friends and I in New York were sort of doing the same thing over and over.

I wanted to break out of the mold, go abroad, have the experience of a new

country.

I wanted to travel.

Rocket was my girlfriend from college.

She was informed by a similar spirit, and we were not ready to have families

surrender, as we saw it, to a nine -to -five.

We wanted something beyond that.

I got the idea of going to Korea from the New York Times.

The money was quite good, $2 ,000 a month. They paid for your airfare. You

get medical insurance.

I pulled the trigger. I said to Rocket,

This is it.

Time to go.

At the time, I knew nothing of Korea, and my ignorance of it now, you know, I

can only laugh at.

We arrived in Seoul, a lot of cement, quite a lot of soot, gray skies.

That was a bit of a blow.

We both looked at each other and said, what are we doing here?

Hello, everyone.

My name is Cullen. I was teaching eight or nine hours a day.

Hobbies. Everyone know what hobby? My favorite hobbies are to write. I'd like

write a novel.

I felt stifled. Thank you. Bye -bye.

This was nothing close to the kind of dreams of adventure that I had.

In the traditional inn where Rocket and I had stayed, there was a pair of

American girls.

One of the girls said to Rocket and I, hey, we have a friend who's been

traveling.

and sending us something special.

Rocket and I not knowing exactly what this was all about.

What is this? What do you have? You know, what's the big deal?

Hey, guys, come on in. The day came that we walked to her back room.

What's in the box? Remember that package we were talking about? She opens up a

box full of those little styrofoam pads.

And she lifts out two coffee tins.

And she pops open the lids and starts pulling out slabs

of hashish.

Our eyes just went wide.

Hash.

Direct from the Philippines.

You got it in the Philippines?

She explained that their friend, who called himself Tocqueville, he had sent

this to the girls from the Philippines.

They were selling it to other foreigners.

My guess was that they could probably make between 10 and 15 ,000 U .S.

I just remember thinking that if they can do this, then

why can't I?

I met the Tocqueville very briefly.

He told me the name of the town in the mountain province of the Philippines

where he had gotten the hashish.

Sagada.

Even the names sort of have this magnetic pull. It became mythologized in

head.

I began to say, Rocket, I'm going to buy some hashish in the Philippines.

You're insane.

Did you know that?

I really think you're insane.

I would come back with some counter -argument.

Think about the money, Rocket. I mean, think about how much you can travel.

I don't want any part of it.

I think I kind of just overruled her, frankly.

No one gets caught.

Even if she had fought me tooth and nail, I

would have done it anyway.

The Koreans have a beautiful metaphor, a phrase they use, which is walking into

the tiger's cave.

That's exactly what we were doing.

I needed a third party to pick up the package.

Zach was a logical choice.

He was a freewheeling character.

I knew that this was sort of a match.

I said to him, would you go to the central post office and go pick up the

package?

Obviously, you'll be taking some kind of risk.

But... We'll split the profits accordingly.

He was persuaded.

Leaving drab winter Korea on our way to the Philippines, we were on top of the

world.

I had never been to the tropics before, nor had Rocket.

It was all so exciting to me.

I got two big juicy coconuts with your name on them.

Cheers.

Cheers.

The palms, the ocean, the sunsets, the weather. We had left Korea's winter.

This is extremely welcome.

One afternoon, looking out on Manila Bay, I said, you see, this is it.

The auspicious start, you know, it all bodes well.

You think you're on holiday, but you are, uh, you're basically walking

into trouble.

After a week in Manila, Rock and I boarded a bus for Sagada.

It was quite a journey. It was a remote place.

The scenery was stunning.

Gorgeous rice terraces.

The color of the fields and the trees, it's the most vibrant green I had ever

seen before.

It was absolutely the adventure we had been looking for.

Our first day in Sagada, we go to a cafe.

There was a group of Filipino guys around our age who were playing cards

drinking beer.

One of the guys, he said, hey, smoke.

And he shows me this slab of hashish I can see.

I said, how much?

Which was dirt cheap for what he was holding.

He gestures to me, you know, come with me.

Step outside.

I said, I'd like to buy, you know, quantity of this, if you have it.

Kilo.

He didn't bat an eye.

He said, no problem.

You bring me the kilo the next day.

It's too easy. All too easy.

Hello.

Hi, guys. How's it going?

Hi.

Two days after first meeting, they came and found Rocket and me.

We went back to my room.

He took out of his bag a kilo of

hashish.

The quantity of it, it was

smaller than I had imagined.

I thought, that's workable.

I gave Bruce the money and that was it.

We just went back outside.

I felt invincible, you know, as if I could do whatever I wanted and the world

was not going to encroach on it.

One day I was looking out at the pretty village.

and thought, why not make another $10 ,000?

I'm going to get another kilo.

I'm not going to share this with Zach.

I'm going to handle this all by myself.

I said to Rocket, I'm going to get more. I'm going to try and get another kilo.

Why?

Why not?

You said it was just going to be the one time.

I had all the counter arguments.

We already got some.

You saw, nothing's going to happen. You see how easy it is. It's so cheap.

I think you're just being greedy about it.

This is what you want to do, isn't it?

You want to travel the world? I mean, think about how long we can travel for

that kind of cash.

Promise me it'll be okay.

Of course it'll be okay.

Don't worry so much.

I think I might have a more assertive personality.

And she gave in.

A few days after the first kilo exchange, I mentioned to

Bruce and John that I wanted more. And could they get me more?

They said yes, but they were more hesitant.

Take your time, man.

All right, well... We'll talk later, I guess.

It didn't go over as well.

See you later.

Days went by, and I would see Bruce and John, but they didn't come forward and

find me as much.

I wanted to just get this second deal done, to get this other kilo, and then

just be gone, to get out of there.

Finally, after what seemed like an

eternity... Hey, man.

One of the guys finally found me one evening, and he said, I've got it.

Same deal. We march back to my room.

I remember hearing the

booming of the insects.

My senses were kind of just brought alive, maybe just by the fear, by the

adrenaline of it.

I paid him.

Say a thousand.

He asked for more money.

I remember pausing there in front of him.

He's fleecing me, basically.

Okay.

What happens if I tell him no?

I remember thinking, no is probably not the right answer.

So, all right, I paid him. He thanked me.

We got it done.

Ironic to recall how Bruce had turned and said to me, you know, be careful

taking it down to Manila.

Because your eyes will give you away.

It filled me with fear because everyone knew that people who go to a place like

Sagada are smuggling drugs.

I wanted to flee the scene.

We arrived back in Manila and I

had to...

Make a package and unload this first kilo.

And I had written fictitious names as both sender and recipient.

Rocket was participating, but really it was my plan to see through.

There was almost a little bit of sort of selfishness to it.

This is my deal.

I remember thinking, like, well, nobody has any idea what I'm doing. There was

some kind of perverse thrill in that.

And then there was a building sense of dread.

What if something goes wrong?

There were a couple of people online, so I waited.

My heart is racing.

I'm thinking, you know, trying to calm myself down, you know, be calm, be calm.

Okay, thank you.

Hi. Yes, good morning.

I go up to the window, and the window had mesh grating over it.

Yeah,

I just want to send it to Korea.

There's a very friendly Filipino at the counter.

Some books and... Can you feel?

Really nervous at this point.

Can you write the declaration, please?

I didn't want to linger or really do anything other than just get this out of

hand.

Then he began a conversation that sort of set me off guard.

He thought I was British, I think.

He started pantomime throwing punches, and I was so caught off guard that

at first I kind of had to replay what he had said in my head before I responded.

I guess I responded fast enough that he didn't think it was anything out of the

ordinary. Finally, he said, And,

you know, I turned around and walked out.

Then I started that same resurgence of feeling like I'm on top of the world.

I'm faxed, Zach.

There's a package coming.

Zach sent the packs back, and he simply said, got your package.

There you go.

This is all coming together, this elaborate international plan, you know,

countries, and here it is. It's all going well.

There was no concept of being caught. It was a real youthful arrogance of

invincibility.

Now here we were faced with this another kilo.

This one was different.

I didn't have a jack on the other side who was going to pick this up.

This was going to be all my own operation.

I thought about just throwing it out.

So simple and yet it was almost like I was possessed.

I couldn't do it.

I simply took the thing and stuffed it down into the middle of a little

bag.

I had Brockett write these fake names, thinking that if they do arrest me,

be someone else's handwriting.

That's how poor the thinking was.

My intuition was telling me...

I don't like the size of this box.

But, again,

just, you know, see the plan through.

The next morning, we went off to the post office.

I think I was actually now kind of shaking with nervousness.

And Rocket was also just distraught.

We climbed the steps. We're standing there between the pillars.

And then I had the idea, you know, Rocket, can you go in there

and do this?

They were going to somehow be left.

suspicious of a woman.

I know she was afraid.

She decided, you know, let's just do

this.

She took the box from me and she marched inside.

Later, I would find out that the Philippines

as a death sentence for drug smuggling.

It's a painful reckoning to look back on just how stupid

one can be.

I just sat there fidgeting on the front steps.

It's a time warp. It feels like a minute stretched into hours.

I was wondering what was taking her so long.

I was begging the universe to not have me.

learn this lesson this way.

After what seemed like an eternity, she came back outside.

So, is it done?

She said, let's go. I did it. I sent it. I sent it express.

You sent it express?

They made me do it. They said that the box was too big and that I had to send

as an express package and register it. I started to get angry, thinking that

that can't help. That would alert more security or surveillance or x -ray

somehow. What was I supposed to do?

I didn't want to go in the first place.

Let's just go, right? Let's go.

I finally said, you know what, okay, whatever, it's fine.

And it was an enormous relief to have it out of our hands, not holding a box

with this thing in it. It was an enormous weight off our shoulders.

Zach volunteered a room in his apartment. We could stay with him.

I remember Zach kind of shaking his head and, you know, looking at me admiringly

like, wow, you know, I got to hand it to you. You said you were going to do it

and you did it.

And there was, you know, that perverse pride in that.

He brought out, you know, several thousand dollars.

I had never made money that easily in my life.

It's all for us.

And I still had this.

Whole other kilo that Zach didn't know about at all.

I was in no rush to get teaching work again.

I was kind of readying myself to enter that lifestyle of being actually a full

-time dealer.

Let's go.

We got lots of it, man.

Zach and I were drinking at night, losing it up, living foul.

Living without a conscience.

You know, it was all very soon to end.

I love it.

I was delaying going to the post office to pick it up.

I remember Rocket wanted this over with.

She wanted her sleeping bag because she wanted to go away by herself because she

was disgusted by what I was doing.

Finally, I said, okay, we're going to go. Let's go. We're going to go to the

post office and see if the package is there.

I smoked from a pipe before we left.

I'm going to pick up a package with a kilo of the same stuff in it.

The level of stupidity is just, it seems mind -boggling.

I was nervous, but more than that, I think I was numb, having been high

every day for months.

On the long, broad avenue down towards the post office,

Rocket actually grabbed my arm at one point and stopped us. She said, you

we could be going into our demise.

Demise?

I liked her vocabulary. I liked her use of the word.

It made me laugh.

We don't have to do this.

Look, everything's going to be all right.

I wish I had listened to her and simply gone back to Zaks, begun teaching again.

We

arrived

at the front of the post office.

Rocket's first instinct was to come inside with me.

And for whatever reason, I said, no, you wait out here.

And she did.

She had brought along Herman Melville's Moby Dick, and she sat down

on the stoop, and I went inside.

i went up to one of the counters and asked do you know where the counter for

packages is and she said oh it's upstairs she was

happy to be using her english and i felt like this was all going to be okay

up the stairs i went

put my hands in my pocket and just paused there at the big glass windows

stood there looking down on Seoul.

I was thinking, why am I doing this here in Korea? I had never done this in the

States.

And there was something of that sort of abuse of someone else's home.

It's not yours, so you don't care as much.

You know, the stakes aren't as high.

Just steeled myself then for the last bit.

Go get the package.

And there were a number of Korean men sitting on couches who were drinking

coffees, reading newspapers.

My intuition just went off in my head, screaming.

Should I just walk out?

No, this is fine.

Look, it was one of the most common fights in Korea.

There's no police here.

The package is probably right there waiting for me.

Be a man. See this through.

I went up to the counter and there was

a list.

I

held

up the clipboard and I pointed to that name, Jay Gallagher.

The postal clerk kind of uttered a little, oh.

I just disregarded it and just stood there waiting, you know, basically, you

know, twiddling my thumb.

It was as though I were picking up a box of socks or fruit or something from my

mom.

The clerk came back, and immediately I see that the package looks like it's

sat on.

It looks worn.

It's been crushed or something.

Again, I just, you know, no matter. There it is.

There's my old friend from the Philippines.

The clerk says, well, I need you to sign a paper. He was smiling at me with sort

of like a sly look on his face.

Maybe I'm just misreading it, but I remember thinking, well, this guy's

weird.

I said, sure, no problem.

Signed for it.

That was it. It was done.

Comes on me, though. So I began to walk away.

Thinking, well, this is going to be great.

It was Friday, about 3 o 'clock in the afternoon, so it was that whole kind of

happy hour feeling.

I'm going to take this home.

Zach and I are going out.

We can stay out late.

That was it. I was cooked.

That bubble I had created just dissolved. I mean, it was nothing.

Once I was grabbed, it was like someone had turned the speed back to normal.

And suddenly, like, the sound came back on.

The

only

thing I could think then was just damage control, rocket.

I didn't know.

whether Rocket was still there or not.

But if we look at each other, they're going to arrest her.

One of the detectives, he's saying, that girl at the front of the post office,

she was waiting for you, wasn't she?

Where's the car?

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

No, I came alone.

I mean, my heart just dropped.

Please, God.

Please, God.

You know, don't let them grab Rocket.

Prosecutor Shin was in a chair across from me, and he was just a really

man.

No sense that, you know, this was a guy who was going to show me any kind of

mercy.

The detective started to go through all my

belongings.

As the detective pours out the bag, a little powdery mist is falling out.

He puts his finger in it and smells it.

And he's like, that's hashish.

He

said,

this is your package. This is a very serious crime in Korea.

I'm saying this is not mine.

The game is well over at this point. I'm terrified.

The detective behind the desk at the computer asks me, what's your phone

in New York?

212 -555.

Hello?

And I hear my father answer the telephone.

Hello? Who's that?

The detective says, does your son, you know, Colin Thomas, does he live there?

You know, he has big problem here in Korea.

Who is that?

And my father, you know, answers. He says, well, what's wrong? What's going

What do you mean?

What's happened?

Hearing my father's voice was another really heavy reminder.

of just how far I had gone.

There has to be some mistake.

My father was a decent man.

I knew he would be disgusted.

Hello, hello.

I wouldn't hear my dad's voice again for three and a half years.

They took me to the detention center.

I stepped into the cell. The guard slammed the door shut. Bang, you know,

away.

You know, the finality of that was profound.

The thought of passing years in a space that's, you know, four and a half feet

by nine feet.

The mind just rebels against it. It doesn't feel possible.

I had a breakdown. I went nuts.

I can't do this!

I was just...

Kept up nights just haunted by the idea of Rocket and what might have befallen

her and where she was.

I prayed like I've never prayed in my life for some kind of reprieve.

One day, the Korean hall worker placed an envelope with no

return address on it.

My family informed me that Rocket had returned to New York, which for me was

a gift beyond words.

After I had been arrested at the post office, Rocket ran to the U .S. Embassy.

She flew home the next day.

Thank God.

I soon met a young Colombian.

who called himself Billy the Kid, who was serving five years.

Billy's advice was that if I can convince Prosecutor Shin that the

just for my own personal use, then I could perhaps escape the selling charge.

So what would I say then? How much would I be...

The next time I was taken into Shin's office, I confessed to the package being

mine. It was for me only.

I had already formulated this idea that I would tell him I had put 12 grams,

for example, into one cup of coffee.

Obviously, it's an absurd amount. Someone who has knowledge of the drug

that's a fib.

But he bought it.

You need to write down.

Either because he knew he was going to get a smuggling conviction and that was

enough for him, or he did not have a real expert knowledge of drugs.

I'm not sure which one it was.

I had to serve every single day of the sentence because basically there was no

parole in Korea at that time.

After roughly two years, I started to get a grip on myself.

I remembered things that Billy had told me about not letting the time use you,

but to use the time instead, make it work for you.

I started a little yoga routine I did every morning, writing in my journal.

It helped me to become one of the strong ones, and it's something that I'm proud

of, that I was able to reach that place there.

My mom wanted to know if it was all right if the family met me at the

They really weren't sure.

what kind of son they were being given back.

People were waiting and my family was there.

It was just really a precious moment for me.

And I didn't break down until I hugged my mom.

And then... My

mom had...

suffered, I think, more than anyone, in

fact.

She smacked me and said, don't ever do that again.

And, you know, all I could do was smile. I mean, she was right and certainly

never will.

Coming up next here on Five, we're on the streets with the old bill and we're

engaging in a little thief -taking.

It's the police interceptors and they're on the way in just a few moments here

on Five.