I’d like to know their choice of defection location as well.
It’s more like the guy shooting you in the head, claiming it was self-defense, then people criticizing you for provoking the gunman. Again - you don’t know that Warmbier “made a conscious decision to break the law.” That is my point, unrelated to the wisdom of entering North Korea in the first place.
Not sure. According to Google reviews, this North Korean concentration camp has 4.1 out of 5 stars. This other one is only rated at 3.2, but I think the reviews are better.
I was going to recommend the U.N. HRC investigate this atrocity, but, given those Google reviews, I doubt they’d find anything remiss.
While I don’t agree with someone shooting Zetetic Skeptic in the head while he was driving, and I will say that he doesn’t deserve that, does he not share any of the responsibility for what happened to him, since he did fail to use his signal when changing lanes? If he had just used his turn signal to change lanes, none of this would have happened. He’s not just a victim.
Even if he didn’t steal the poster, and the charges were entirely manufactured for some unfathomable reason (a possibility that I’m not ruling out, since North Korea does a lot of unfathomable things), he certainly still chose to go to North Korea, and that’s already a pretty stupid decision.
Yes, the primary responsibility must absolutely go to the murderous despotic thugs running North Korea. But it’s also not exactly a secret that North Korea is run by murderous despotic thugs.
How does your mind do this? You read this board. You must see that there is no widespread backing for North Korea on the left. You see this with your own eyes.
But then Fox News tells you that it’s happening and you believe it’s true. How can that happen? How can you trust any authority so much that you believe it even when it’s telling you something you know isn’t true?
If I (Otto) knew the person doing the shooting (NK) was prone to killing people for random perceived slights, you can bet I (Otto) would’ve used my turn signal (woundn’t have allegedly taken a poster of dear leader).
In fact, if the murderer is known to frequent that stretch of road, I think a detour would have been in order.
See, that’s the difference between you and Otto Warmbier - you would detour around NK and he didn’t. For that matter, I would take a detour around NK as well. So despite you being on the right and me on the left we are, in fact, in synch and agreement on that point. Really, avoiding or not avoiding NK has nothing to do with whether or not one is on the Left or Right in the US.
“many”? Like who? How many? A million? A thousand? Ten? :dubious:
I knew I liked you for some good reason even though you’re supposed to be my sworn mortal enemy (according to the current narrative)!!!
I have stayed at the hotel in question in Pyongyang. You’d have to be a complete and total moron to go down to the employee break room in the middle of the night to steal a poster. I can’t imagine anyone doing that, and I would expect such people to be treated very harshly. Our room was on the 28th floor and most other floors were unoccupied. There aren’t many people around so you are very likely to be noticed wandering around late at night. There is a bar in the basement where some people hang out, but not anywhere near the restaurant and break rooms.
You can also buy these posters in the hotel gift shop right across from the front desk. I have one hanging on my office wall.
Would you be willing to say why you were in North Korea? Was is a tourist thing or were you there as a journalist?
Here’s what I cannot reconcile in my head: hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of North Koreans are punished in sickening ways for infractions that might be trivial, and there’s general agreement that North Korea is to blame for unfair laws that are an affront to basic human rights. But when an American gets caught up in the same disgusting legal system, it is a controversial matter whether he is to blame or not.
When the same laws and torture policies are in play in both cases, why do we hold North Koreans to be victims, but an American was asking for it? Ordinary North Koreans know the laws and risks far better than a tourist; why aren’t they blamed for doing things that leads to their torture?
Holy e fuck no.
I read that latest story yesterday. I wish I had not.
And now to be honest, I really don’t care if a major war breaks out and a few million north Koreans get nuked.
Good move there little Kim.
He bought his ticket, he knew what he was getting into. I say, let him get tortured!
I don’t think anyone said he was asking for it. But he knew the risks and chose to take the risk of going to that country (just as everyone does who visits for whatever reason). I think your comparison is a little unbalanced in that Otto was there by choice while the North Koreans you talk about are forced against their will simply by being born there. I think the big difference is force vs choice.
This is very reminiscent of the various “slut-shaming” discussions we get into on the SDMB from time to time. No, he absolutely didn’t deserve what he got, but that doesn’t mean what he did wasn’t stupid. Especially since we don’t know what he did - the North Koreans said it, therefore it is pretty likely to be somewhere in the range of “misinterpretation” thru “that American would make a good hostage” up to “outright lies”.
The North Koreans kidnap people. That’s not in dispute. It is entirely possible that Otto stole a poster. It is also possible that the North Koreans wanted an English teacher, or for ransom, for some other fucking stupid evil reason.
And that anthropology professor is an idiot. Not merely for this -
But for this
WTF does that have to do with it?
Regards,
Shodan
The OP has a quote from someone who said “he got what he deserved.” If you want to split hairs and describe the difference between “he got what he deserved” and “he was asking for it,” then go nuts. I have literally no interest in that discussion.
As far as choice versus force, I can’t see how that matters at all. The detainees at Guantanamo, for example, never made a willful decision to be captured by U.S. troops or associated forces. Does that entitle them to a higher or lower degree of human rights?
IMHO, basic human rights are basic human rights. Nobody ever waives them by virtue of making some decision or another. There’s no justification for torture, period.