That was different. In NK’s eyes, Otto committed a grave crime while in NK on a tour. A defection of a US soldier is a propaganda win for them, they aren’t going to torture the guy.
More information.
At this point, I’m assuming that he woke up this morning with the mother of all hangovers mumbling “man, what did I do yesterday” to himself.
military dot com is not actually a government outfit. I agree with you that they should know what they’re talking about, but and alas, they don’t always.
I also agree with you about our service members should be on their best behavior while overseas. That’s actually drilled into them when they receive their orders to go overseas, and also upon arrival and periodically while stationed in another country.
There’s a nifty bit of information about the DMZ tour. You have to schedule in advance and provide your passport information. US military stationed in Korea are not required to have a passport, so they use their military identifiction card instead. The USO is not the only outfit providing tours. I can see the USO being advised of a BOLO message for this particular genius, but I doubt other tour providers are.
From what little I’ve learned of this guy in the past day or so he does not seem to be a deep thinker. I’m leaning towards “has poor impulse control and anger issues”. This leads to dumb actions that seem like a good idea at the time (but aren’t).
And he was laughing as he ran which is just… bizarre. Maybe he was thinking “think is how I get out of facing trouble back in the States!”. Well, maybe he avoided that particular problem but it’s a case of out of the frying pan, into the fire. Also, when and if he eventually gets back to the States he will face the exact discipline he’s currently evading, and then some.
I expect he’ll be experiencing some regret about his life choices in the last few days.
And, not infrequently, are also individuals who have never served a day in the military.
Otto Warmbier would be one guess. By the time he was shipped back to the US he was severely brain-damaged and dying. But Warmbier’s not the only person abused while in North Korea custody. In the US when you’re arrested you get read your right, in North Korea when you get arrested they seem to start with a beating and go from there.
Charles Robert Jenkins might dispute that. In addition to the beatings and other mistreatment by the time he was able to leave North Korea he was missing a testicle and part of a tattoo. Pretty sure he didn’t willingly give up the first and the latter was removed without anesthesia and probably without consent. And he was the defector they actually treated “well”, including making sure he and his family had at least some food during the Arduous March. (Should I mention that his marriage was not his idea? He was forced to marry a kidnapped Japanese national)
Citizens but much more so soldiers. The US will do everything possible to bring him back (then presumably throw the book at him). “Everything possible” is not all that much of course, so he could be looking at being entertained by the security forces of North Korean for a long time.
Its not clear how they will end up treating him, one end of the spectrum is Otto Warmbier the other Charles Jenkins. Probably the latter is more likely?
We should start by asking North Korea to extradite him. They won’t, of course, but it sets the right tone: This guy willingly entered North Korea of his own volition, in order to evade consequences for a crime. If he hadn’t committed a crime (and keep in mind, going AWOL was also a crime), and had willingly entered North Korea, then our response would, I hope, be simply “Sorry you made bad life choices, sucks to be you”.
if i were a high-level defector (not necessarily to North Korea, could be anywhere), of course I would expect the military to do everything in their power to get me back and court-martial me for treason, and to have to formally request political asylum to try to ensure they could not.
Yes, for American soldiers captured overseas, or civilians imprisoned unjustly. (like that woman’s basketball star held by Russia )
But in this case, the blame is clearly 100 percent on the soldier ,for his stupid and totally voluntary choice of action.
The American public isn’t going to feel any sympathy for him, and US politicians know it…
There will be some strong words from the State Dept saying that they hold N.Korea responsible for his safety, etc.
But I don’t expect much more than that.
Not really at issue here. Anyway, it’s all a bit ironic given your user name.
I’m not so sure.
Their smart move is to say, sure, and here’s a list of our deserters for you to extradite back to us.
Doesn’t matter, AFAIK its still US policy to everything possible to bring him back (as in the case of Bowe Berdahl though that case seems much less cut and dried than this one, in that there are different versions of the circumstances surrounding his going missing).
Of course its pretty academic, as the US government saying “Meh whatever, its his own fault” would have about the same result as saying “We will do everything in our power to bring him home!” He’ll come home when North Korea considered political expedient to do so.
The Secretary of Defense says that his “foremost” concern is “the welfare of our troop.” Surely the Army is listening. So IMHO this guy will face no real punishment from our side, if repatriated.
I would hope there would be at least a token incarceration if only to allow for a thorough psych eval. But i also hope they’ll take into account whatever he had suffered in NK.
At a minimum, he is eating less now than ever before in his life. And i wouldn’t be surprised if his SK crimes are taken very seriously in NK. They consider themselves to be wrongly divided from their cousins in the South. Reunification is always the goal. So his best case scenario would be them releasing him to face SK justice.
I expect he will be very “energetically questioned” over several months.
:shudder:
If they release him before they get their deserters, then we just say “Thanks but no thanks, those folks haven’t broken any of our laws, so we won’t extradite them”, and we get this dude back for free. If they wait to release him until after we send back their deserters, then we say the same thing, and it’s functionally the same thing as them saying no. Either way, of course, they’ll spin it for domestic propaganda, but they were going to do that no matter what happened, and I don’t see why we should care much about their domestic propaganda anyway.
This guy does not appear to be the sharpest tool in the shed. Who knows NK may end up offering something else to us, if we will take him back.
He already did his SK time (other than any SK penalty for running to NK, if that’s a crime).
Plus, with Bergdahl, if he hadn’t been recovered, he’d have ended up as the lone MIA from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Every couple of years, we’d be subject to some new story about “what really happened” or reports that “I saw him in Tucson just last week. He was driving a convertible and looked from his hair cut like he was still in the military, maybe working undercover.” Every remembrance of the War in Afghanistan would end with a solemn pledge to “never rest” until our “MIA” is (singular) returned home, followed by a back and forth shouting match over whether he was really MIA or a deserter.
Now, thankfully, we won’t be subjected to that. Proof enough that though our times may be dark, this is not the darkest possible timeline. We can all skip the goatees.
You can be confident he will be kept on active duty pending disposition of appropriate administrative and criminal proceedings, with plenty of poking and prodding by medical professionals of all stripes, including mental health.
:shrug: Maybe it’s a crime to misbehave in the DMZ? Or some kind of immigration offense to overstay in the ROK after the military sent him through customs and revoked his status as part of US Forces Korea or whatever. I wouldn’t be surprised if somewhere between the airport and the DMZ some kind of immigration-related crime was committed.
But I suspect the ROK won’t care a whole lot, just so long as, if he’s returned to South Korea, he’s promptly put on a plane bound for the US–under escort the whole way this time.
Jenkins was held in North Korea for 39 years. I think the Army decided that that was punishment enough.
He also supposedly provided information to Military Intelligence about North Korea, so most likely got a deal based on that as well.