The Jong family whether it be Jong il or Jong un or Jong Pak (brother of Un I think) has always had a fixation on western culture whether it be Jong il’s fixation on western imported alcohol and caviar or Jong un’s fixation on Dennis Rodman and the NBA or Jong Pak’s fascination on Disney (which led him to attempt a trip to Disney Japan)
Suppose Kim Jong Un really gets the notion that he wants to go to Disney Land and so he boards a flight from Pyongyang to China and then flies direct to Los Angeles using a fake Chinese passport lovingly supplied to him by the People’s Republic of China as a gift to their favorite client son.
When Kim Jong Un arrives in the United States it becomes painfully obvious that he is really Kim Jong Un
Does US Customs detain him? Do they arrest him? Does he get deported? Does he get to go to Disney?
What would happen if Kim Jong Un flew to the United States with the intention of going to Disney?
The use of fraud to obtain an us visa is a federal crime punishable by a fine and up to 25 years of imprisonment, so theoretically he could be detained on those grounds. However, even though the US had personal sanctions on Kim Jong Un, those sanctions are financially-based and no grounds for arrest or detainmnent.
As to his visit to Disney, US sanctions forbid Americans from doing business with him, so Disney would unlikely allow him to visit.
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Except that he’s a head of state, and enjoys sovereign immunity.
The US could, um, ask him to leave. They could protest diplomatically at the infringement of their visa regulations, and take other measures if so minded, e.g. ask Sweden to cease its diplomatic representation of North Korean interests in the US and US interests in North Korea. If they wanted to get really shirty they could impose or ramp up sanctions against North Korea, but I don’t really see that.
I would think it would in part depend on the succession plan in place for Un, assuming the US knows it. Is whatever’s next better or worse than leaving Un in power?
Also, what would the Chinese reaction be if the US detained Un?
The US doesn’t have diplomatic relations with NK (or vice versa) but so far as I’m aware they do recognise the state. The question of who is the “legitimate government” of North Korea isn’t any business of the US (or any other foreign state), and I doubt they have an official opinion on it. The only question of interest to the US is who actually does govern North Korea.
I recall reading somewhere that for people who arrive without proper documentation - invalid passport, no visa, already barred - the airline or carrier that brought them is responsible for removing them - presumably on the next flight back to where they came from.
Whether they’d want to detain him - like his brother in Japan, probably more trouble than it’s worth. It’s not like he’s going to spill important state secrets, and it’s possible he’s only been fed the good news and cannot tell the US the real details about anything NK does. If he’s absent for any length of time, someone else will take over and he may not be able to get back - or may not find it beneficial to go back. Better to send him back to China and let them decide what to do.
I would generally agree that in this fantastic scenario, the dictator would more likely be refused entry than arrested. Not because the US is prohibited from arresting him (sovereign immunity, to my knowledge, does not apply in the US from being prohibited from arresting the leader of another country, it has to do with limiting people’s ability to sue the US or other countries for civil wrongs), but because we probably don’t want to deal with the shitstorm that would follow from arresting him.
But he could travel to New York to meet at the UN, of which North Korea is a member. Maybe Disney would put a satellite park within JFK, he could visit.
I may be misunderstanding the course of events, but it looks to me like the elder brother (Jong Nam, not Jong Pak) may have been detained simply while the Japanese authorities tried to figure out who he really was. Once they did so, they just tossed him out of the country like a hot potato. My guess is that the same thing would happen as to Jong Un.
For a twist, what if he asked for asylum? He might claim that his family had decided to kill him, or that the Army was revolting. Would we accept him? He would be an intelligence gold mine, but that’s a huge provocation to North Korea.
As for Disneyland, I seem to recall that Khrushchev expressed interest in visiting back in the day, but the security arrangements were insurmountable. Is that a true story or just a diplomatic legend?
Just curious why you think having Jong Nam would be an intelligence gold mine?
I highly doubt there is much about North Korea’s capabilities that we don’t already know, and that most if not all of the propaganda that they spread is complete utter bullshit.
Besides, Nam since his brother’s succession to power has split most of his time between Macau, Beijing, and Singapore; and hasn’t been involved in the inner workings of the NK government since 2008/2009.
I think this story is better if it’s not really Jong Un, but merely some guy who has the misfortune of looking like Jong Un. He protests initially, because of course. But then maybe he figures if he tells the authorities what they want to hear, they will go easier on him.
Why would Jong Un be an intelligence gold mine? We know everything about the country we need to know. All their technology is bought or stolen from other countries. We might learn a little bit about the power struggles in their pathetic government, but that is of virtually no interest to the U.S.
Any high level defector from North Korea is a big deal. There’s plenty we don’t know about the internal workings of the NK regime. We don’t by any non-classified evidence know much at all of it in real time. And their possession of nukes and even large non-nuclear forces makes that lack of knowledge quite relevant.
And if the actual leader of the country was leaving, or mental state was really such as to try to visit the US incognito, we’d really want to know what/who was surrounding that set of events.
OTOH members of the family not involved in the inner workings (the one deported by Japan at the time, and Kim Jung Un himself was off in foreign boarding school not that many years ago) wouldn’t necessarily know anything that interesting, nor in any case would showing up and getting detained mean they were willing to talk.
BTW ‘Jong family’ is a joke, right? It’s the Kim family. The given names of most of the male children of Kim Jong Il just have the same first syllable Jong, as is common.
