How do you think China would react to this?
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Let’s see… Back in 1952-53, the US had the DPRK on the ropes - all that was left was some monor “mopping up”, as the expression goes.
Then the PLA came across the river in mass - and made things messy.
Best we could do was a “Truce”.
But, yeah, I’m sure the PLA has better things to do nowadays…
By all accounts, Otto was the Darwin award winner this year.
North Korea used to be in pretty good shape until the end of the cold war. There used to be serious and significant suppression of free speech in South Korea because North Korea was doing as well as if not better than South Korea. Then the soviet union collapsed and Kim Il Sung died and left the country to his son and shit went downhill fast. There was a smaller pie because the soviets weren’t pumping money into North Korea anymore and the regime became more despotic as they tried to retain control in the hands of a few powerful families.
North Korea has an economy of 12 billion dollars. We could buy off North Korea with what we give to Egypt an Israel every year but its easier to justify spending money there for some reason. Sure most of that money would end up in the hands of the Plutocrats but at some point they will have too much to lose and will run off to France leaving their country in the lurch so they don’t end up like Qaddafi.
Yes, a good rule of thumb when visiting a ruthless, brutal, authoritarian cult of personality dictatorship (other than “don’t go”) is do not do anything whatsoever that might draw negative attention to yourself (unless you are actually willing to sacrifice your life as a matter of principal.)
You might ask if being worried about the consequences of stealing a banner is asking someone to be too paranoid, but if you are visiting a country where officials are executed for not applauding enthusiasticly enough, you absolutely should realize (if you aren’t as stupid as a bag of hammers) that the consequences could be bad.
AFAIK, the only evidence of him stealing the banner comes from the North Koreans, so it’s really impossible to evaluate its veracity. He may have done so, or the North Koreans may have thought he would be a useful pawn and fabricated the whole thing. There’s really no way of knowing at this point.
That surprised me – I thought, at the time of his arrest, that there had been corroboration of the poster theft by some Americans (specifically members of his frat). But I can’t find any such reporting now, two years later, so maybe that’s my fallible memory.
I tend to think his confession was probably truthful, just because the details are so tawdry and dumb – and didn’t implicate the US government or anything spicy like that. But as you say, we can only guess at this point.
Poor kid.
Given the clumsiness of the NK regime if they wanted to frame him for something they would have said espionage or other spy crimes. ‘Stealing a flag’ doesn’t seem like something they would come up with.
If you want to debate the merits of an American visiting a country with whom we have no diplomatic relations, that’s certainly something that can be debated. But there’s no evidence that Otto Warmbier actually did what he was accused of. All you see is a grainy silhouette of someone removing something from the wall. What is being removed from the wall? Which wall? Who’s removing it? Not at all clear. North Korea’s regime can’t give a straight answer on anything, so I wouldn’t put much stock in their word that he did what he’s accused of.
They accused him of taking a poster down off of a wall and the only evidence they have is 2-4 seconds of a dark silhouetted figure removing something from a wall. There’s no evidence at all that he did what he’s accused of, and I do find it beyond odd that people are giving credence to a regime that essentially depends on the distortion of reality in order to exist.
Well, that falls back on the even better advice “don’t go there.” If you stick your head into a warren of rabid wolverines, don’t get all surprised if your nose gets chewed off.
Is that video of him taking down he banner thought to be faked, or is it him doing something other than stealing the banner?
Indeed, consider how North Korea survived in the first place. Anywhere near the Yalu River, and China’s going to have something to say about and they have a rather high tolerance for pain.
Yeah, containing North Korea is a joint problem of South Korea, China, and Japan. They’ve done what they’ve needed to for decades now. So why would we want to override their wishes and put them all in danger?
Who can tell? You can’t identify the person in the video, and there’s no way to substantiate anything about when or where it was taken. It might be Otto. It might be staged. It might be the night cleaning staff dusting behind the banner.
I again find myself asking this question. Why are you buying into North Korea’s narrative on Warmbier?
Just to be clear, I have no idea if the video is anything other than real or if it’s a fake. I was wondering if there was some consensus among analysts about this. Poor guy could have been just a pawn in the power play. But then, that is a real risk you take if you choose to go to that country.
You can identify who that is from the video?
About 25% of military conscripts are turned down in north Korea because childhood malnutrition made them mentally retarded. So off the bat, 25% of North Koreans have retardation due to starvation. That doesn’t even factor in all the physical health problems caused by starvation and lack of medical care. Plus North Korea has a meth epidemic, so a lot of people are lost in addiction too.
On top of that the constant state sponsored terrorism has made people very emotionally damaged and destroyed any sense of community. People who escape into China are surprised by seeing strangers helping each other. That is rare in north Korea. Once people find out that everything they’ve been told is lies they stop trusting everyone.
Point is even if the regime falls many of the people are too physically and emotionally unhealthy to function. Supposedly the ones that escape into South Korea form a permanent underclass because they cannot cope with modern life.
It’ll be another generation after the regime falls before they start getting on their feet.
Indeed. China has always been the primary patron to North Korea and they want to keep it in place both as a military buffer zone against South Korea and Japanese incursion, and as a presence in the East China Sea creating instability and preventing dominance by the US-Japanese military alliance. This latest diplomatic incident is hardly justification for starting a regional war that could easily grow wider in effects and participants, particularly since the US Department of State has maintained a travel warning for over a decade which makes it clear that the State Department has little recourse for citizens detained, accused of, or convicted of violations of North Korean laws. From the most current warning statement:
Since the United States does not maintain diplomatic or consular relations with North Korea, the U.S. government has no means to provide normal consular services to U.S. citizens. The Embassy of Sweden in Pyongyang is the Protecting Power for U.S. citizens in the DPRK providing limited consular services to U.S. citizens who require emergency assistance. Although the U.S.-DPRK Interim Consular Agreement stipulates that North Korea will notify the Embassy of Sweden within four days of an arrest or detention of a U.S. citizen and will allow consular visits by the Swedish Embassy within two days after a request is made, the DPRK government routinely delays or denies consular access.
In other words, if you get into trouble, you may well be on your own, a reality that should be apparent to any visitor from the US.
If there was a time when the United States was clearly justified in attacking the North Korean regime, it was the illegal seizure of the USS Pueblo in 1968 and nearly year-long detention and torture of the captain and crew. However, because of Cold War tensions and being embroiled in Viet Nam (the attack occurred just a week prior to the Tet Offensive), diplomatic efforts to secure the return of the crew and quelling concerns by South Korea over a breaking of the armistice were applied in lieu of military action.
It is difficult to see how the threat or application of military force by the US or allies in the Far East will effectively dismantle or displace the DPRK government without risking millions of lives of South Koreans and a significant potential for a wider conflict that would serve no one. Pressing a diplomatic solution with the Peoples Republic of China to control and contain the Kim Regime in North Korea is by far the best option for everyone involved. The regime continues to exist, such as it is, by virtue of Chinese patronage, and convincing China to discourage the regime’s nuclear ambitions (such as they can at this point) is the smartest move. If the US takes unilateral military action that results in anything less than a mostly bloodless removal of the Kim regime it will reflect poorly on the US and further strain diplomatic ties with allies in the region.
Yes, North Korea is a humanitarian disaster and is a blot in the history of 21st century global politics which has, despite a few specific conflicts, progressed to less open warfare and slowly nudging to greater democratic representation within nations, but the US has already engaged in one horrendously destructive war in the region that was not resolved to anyones’ satisfaction and a future war on North Korea without at least the tacit support of China would be highly destabilizing and potentially lead to global conflict, notwithstanding the hash that someone like Putin could make elsewhere while the US is focused on conflict on the Korean Peninsula. We don’t go to war over injustice done to one foolhardy US citizen only to kill millions more who are innocent of even the poor judgment or misfortune except to be in artillary or missile range of North Korea.
Remediation of the humanitarian disaster of North Korea is another topic entirely, and one that will require global assistance to an effort by South Korea to reintegrate the North Korean population. This is something that China most certainly does not want to support for numerous reasons and I frankly cannot conceive how the parties involved would come to terms with it (other than essentially making all of North Korea into a demilitarizied zone) even if the Kim Regime were to magically disappear or abdicate today. I’ve seen the comparison to the reintegration of Germany after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, but East Germany had citizens who were well educated, fairly aware of the false nature of government propaganda, and had at least basic skills and industry to join the West German economy. Even that integration as economically and socially painful, but was nothing compared to the enormous cost and social difficulty of the hypothetical reintegration of the Koreas.
Stranger
I commiserate with the OP, really. As an American, nothing irks me more than seeing complex, ongoing, highly volatile geopolitical conflicts that we can’t resolve overnight by bombing the shit out of something.