Here is a list of North Korean embassies. Contact one and ask. (Then sit back and wait for the CIA to come knocking on your door.)
Wouldn’t the NK government love to have an American want to move there? Of course, you would be a Communist puppet for NK propaganda pieces, but I would think that they would welcome you with open arms! (After beating you senselessly first to make sure you aren’t a spy, of course).
See post #2, it happened, six US soldiers defected to North Korea but the most recent was in 1982.
According to Chapter V, Article 62, of the Constitution of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea:
That tends to show it’s possible for a foreigner to get DPRK citizenship. There have also been cases of persons abducted from other countries, including South Korea. Two of them, a film director and actress (ex)husband and (ex)wife, had permission from North Korea’s government to travel and escaped while on that trip. Presumably they were not traveling on their South Korean passports as there is, of course, no South Korean embassy in North Korea.
It’s unlikely that any South Koreans, kidnapped or otherwise, are “granted” DPRK citizenship. As the governments don’t recognize each other, but rather claim sovereignty over the entire peninsula, each considers the other’s population to be de jure their own citizens. The US State Department’s warns Korean-American travellers that any non-DPRK citizenship they hold may not be recognized by the DPRK, and so they may be subject to DPRK conscription, income taxes, and other obligations. This is probably what happened with Kenneth Bae, a South Korean-American who was recently convicted of plotting to overthrow the DPRK government and sentenced to 15 years’ hard labour. Western media are making much of the fact that he’s an American citizen, but according to North Korean law he’s probably a North Korean citizen by virtue of being born in Korea.
Try this: “He received a North Korean passport after establishing the Korean Friendship Association in the year 2000 and since then has been designated a legal representative of the North Korea Foreign Ministry.”
psychonaut: That’s a heck of a lot of speculation you’ve got going on there.
Does the whole concept of “de jure” even make much sense, though, in the context of a country that appears to lack the rule of law? For instance, I can’t imagine that Bae was detained by some civil servant who concluded that North Korean citizenship law required him to do so; rather, I assume that it was a political decision made at high levels for the deliberate purpose of provoking a new confrontation with the US.
Sorry, I wasn’t aware that I was writing a Wikipedia article where I had to provide detailed sources for every claim I made. Article 3 of the ROK constitution defines the territory of the republic as the entire Korean peninsula. At the time of the ROK’s establishment in 1948, citizenship was granted to Koreans residing in the ROK. Article 2 of the ROK’s current Nationality Act provides for citizenship by descent. Most people who are or are descended from Koreans resident on the peninsula in 1948 are therefore citizens of the ROK, at least as far as the ROK is concerned.
Similarly, Article 1 of the 1963 Nationality Law of the DPRK conferred citizenship on all Koreans who held Korean citizenship prior to the establishment of the DPRK in 1948, as well as their children, and provided for citizenship by descent. Most people who are or are descended from Koreans resident on the peninsula in 1948 are therefore citizens of the DPRK, at least as far as the DPRK is concerned.
The DPRK has a history of restricting the freedom of movement of its “citizens”, including kidnapping or detaining foreign visitors of Korean heritage who they deem to be their own citizens. This behaviour is specifically mentioned in the “Dual Nationality” section of the US State Department’s travel advisory for the DPRK. It’s easy to find reports of past incidents in the news and in history books and articles.
So I suppose it’s speculation, but hardly an unreasonable one, that the DPRK considers Bae a North Korean citizen. Not that they actually required this pretense to detain him, of course; in the past the DPRK has detained people who were neither Korean by heritage nor by citizenship. They may have used his supposed citizenship to determine which crimes to charge him with, though. If he was charged with treason it could only have been as a citizen, since by definition treason is betraying one’s own country.
Look, if the guy were considered actually a citizen of North Korea, there would’ve been no trial, nothing other than execution. As someone who’s lived his entire life outside of North Korea, there’s no way the DPRK authorities would take a chance on him “contaminating” the locals–police, etc.–with tales of how wonderful it is outside the worker’s paradise.
The whole thing is a stage-managed–badly–attempt to get a high-level negotiator from the US to go to North Korea and say, “Oh, we’re sorry we were so mean to insist you guys don’t try to build nuclear weapons. Carry on!” Well, that last bit’s not going to happen, but there may be some other kind of concession or appeasement.
By the way, this article says that he
. No word of treason there. But, it could be sedition. Of course, I don’t believe the guy actually did anything wrong. He’s just another convenient excuse for North Korea.
This article says that he
We can argue what the alleged crime was all day long, but right now we’re discussing it in English. I have yet to see a charge sheet or court order in Korean. And I seriously doubt I’ll ever actually see one from the scourge that is North Korea.
It is a singularly unpleasant place, to be sure.
I very much doubt that. One of the hallmarks of authoritarian regimes is that they place great emphasis on maintaining the trappings of democracy—laws, trials, and so forth—in an attempt to give legitimacy and credence to their caprice. This is especially true for high-profile incidents which will be closely scrutinized by outsiders. The North Koreans obviously don’t fear that trial and imprisonment of foreigners (or foreign residents) will lead to cultural contamination; as recently as 2009 they detained, tried, and convicted two American journalists, Euna Lee and Laura Ling. They were caught up in the North Korean legal system for nearly five months before Bill Clinton negotiated their release.
psychonaut, your conjectures just aren’t doing anyone any good. Trials in North Korea are routinely either not public, non-existent, or made public for show. See here for an account of an ad hoc trial that lasted 15 minutes and concluded with a beating and a 15 year sentence.
It has also been widely reported that the prison camps for political crimes are not subject to any judicial proceedings at all. Cite.
Exactly. The last time they turned down several possible intermediaries before graciously accepting a visit from former President Bill Clinton.
Which is why they insist that the current crisis (entirely manufactured by them) can only be resolved by President Obama calling Kim Jong-Un. It is all about the prestige of being the one who is approached, not the one who does the approaching.
You seriously think that North Korea has “all the trappings of democracy”? :eek:
In case you haven’t noticed yet, North Korea doesn’t care about outside scrutiny. They’ve pretty much immunizied themselves to it. What they want is what they’ve always wanted: control.
They were not “caught up in the legal system”. They were held hostage. They also were not imprisoned with North Korean prisoners.
Of course, they fear that outsiders will contaminate the local pure ones. That’s one reason that those born in the total contral prison camps are taught nothing about the outside, not even what’s going on in North Korea.
Where are you getting your ideas about North Korea?
I live in South Korea and there are daily tours to the DMZ; any big hotel in Seoul can set you up.
Once there, there are some very fetching North Korean girls standing on their side of the border, beckoning you to come over.
Not sure what happens next.
There is also straight-up tourism to North Korea. You have to go to China and switch passports, but it’s doable. Friends of mine have done it. It costs more tan a trip to Paris, though, and none of them was the least bit tempted to overstay.
Yeah, right. :rolleyes:
Huh? AFAIK, North Korea doesn’t actually stamp your passport. And what would you switch it to anyway?
This fascinates me!! A tourist who speaks Korean would be able to share some interesting stories. Can you share? I would love to know what goes on in the mind of a North Korean.
On youtube, I’ve watched 5 or 10 clips of American tourists being escorted by their North Korean “guide” (i.e. censor). The guide speaks reasonable English, but not well enough that the tourists can ask him subtle questions.
But a Korean-speaking tourist might be able to penetrate the brainwashing , and guess by the guide’s tone of voice and body language what the guide is really thinking.
Maybe a tourist who speaks the language could so some simple things: such as during a meal, complementing the Dear Leader’s wonderfully tasty food— and then asking the guide what he likes to cook at home. Followed by another question: does he cook for his extended family, too, etc, and enjoy hosting friends on the holidays, etc, and where does he buy the food, etc. (and through all this, maybe it would be possible to determine from the guide’s reactions and tone of voice whether he and his family have enough to eat all year round.)
Or, for example, in several youtube clips, the American tourists have gadgets–an MP3 player, a cell phone camera, etc…and the guides seem to be surprisingly uninterested in the technology, even though it is totally new to them.
Obviously, the guides cannot let themselves be seen in public as being corruptable by Western influence; they and their whole family would disappear to a prison camp.
But maybe a Korean speaker could get a little closer than a westerner, and get the N Korean guide to open up his feelings a little. Perhaps, by showing him a gadget, and asking him to use it himself. Then maybe the guide would express some emotion at seeing something new, and maybe, just maybe express interest in how such things are made and sold in other countries, and how people live in those countries.
I’m just wondering…It’s hard to fathom such a foreign mindset.
One of my friends in law school said his uncle was a judge in NK and I don’t have any reason to doubt him. The presence of judges seems to indicate a likelihood of attorneys, but who knows.
You will never ever ever learn on a “tour” to North Korea what’s going on in the mind of a North Korean. There are no tours as such. There are only dog and pony shows. It’s a complete farce.
That’s exactly right. That’s the only kind of tourism available to North Korea. The guides are not there to answer subtle questions nor to question the North’s party line.
Cruise over to the Vice Guide to Travel and check out the episode where one American on the “tour” asked some critical questions about North Korea. It got ugly very fast. Here is a link to the 1st of 3 parts of the video; I don’t remember where in the video it occurred.
It doesn’t matter if the “tourist” speaks Korean or not. There is no “getting closer” to the guide or the guide “opening up” to a foreigner. There’s a reason why there’s never just one minder assigned to a tour group and it’s not to make it easier to herd the group around the incredibly few sites they’re permitted to see. If–and it’s an incredibly, infinitesimal if–one of the guides were to handle the device, the other guide would report him. And poof three generations of yet another family get a government-funded move.
Actually, I find it quite easy to fathom it. They’re taught from birth that North Korea is the be all and end all of everything and anything that’s said to the contrary is BS told by a bunch of liars all instigated by evil America.
And, once again, there is no such thing as a tour of North Korea. There are only dog and pony show, escorted walks. If you go, you will not see anything that has not been specifically chosen for you to see; you will not meet someone who has not been specifically vetted for you to meet. It’s a crime against the language to call what they do tourism.