I have a cousin who ran away from home at 15, shacked up with a set of 40 year olds doing heroin, had five kids who were taken away from her at various points by the government, to protect them, (though I believe that they were given back). She died last week, by stepping out into the street without looking.
Her life sucked in part because of her upbringing and in part because of emotional instability that runs through branches of my family. I’m sad that her life sucked, but I’d much rather that it stopped with her. People are free to ruin their own lives, but there’s nothing to be gained by letting them ruin others.
I think he should spend three years in NK, marry a North Korean woman, then defect back to the US where he will bounce from one low-paying job to another, found the “Fair Play for Syria” committee, and the the FBI, CIA, Mafia, and Illiminati can use him as the patsy in an elaborate plot to assassinate a high public official. Using a robot chicken.
I have mixed feelings on the Matthew Miller situation. On one hand, he knew what he was getting himself into. On the other hand, he’s probably mentally ill and should be treated with compassion. On the third hand, NOBODY should be in a North Korean prison. Even the worst criminals in the world shouldn’t be subjected to such “cruel and unusual punishment.”
The United States should not make efforts to free people who travel to a foreign country with the specific intent to violate that country’s laws.
The question becomes - Did Jeffrey Fowle actually leave the bible in the hotel room and did Kenneth Bae actually attempt to proselytize in North Korea? For Kenneth Bae, a Christian missionary, the answer is almost certainly “yes.” We should not make efforts to have him released.
For Jeffrey Fowle, the answer is not as clear. We don’t have any real evidence that he did leave that bible in that room, nor have I heard anything about him being especially religious or into proselytizing. I think the most likely scenario is that he did transport the bible into North Korea, thus intentionally violating NK law, but given the information that we have, we should give him the benefit of the doubt.
Count me in the votes for “this guy must have some serious mental issue”. There was a time (say, at the height of the cold war) when I could see some otherwise normal people defecting to NK, but nowodays?
From all relevant indicators (the dude who’s already serving a sentence of “hard labor” in North Korea, the journalists who were imprisoned and then released), the latest idiot convicted by North Korea’s so-called judiciary will not actually be performing hard labor; not to mention that he certainly won’t be living in the squalid conditions teeming masses imprisoned in North Korea’s labor camps are living in.
At any rate, what do you expect the US government to do that it’s not already doing? Can’t send any kind of spokesperson into North Korea without that country’s government’s permission. The US seems to have already asked for such permission to discuss this and the other cases and North Korea has declined.
Just a linguistic point here: the Korean language actually does have both the /r/ and /l/ sounds. Actually, plenty of languages in Asia have both of those sounds. Japanese, being a language isolate, certainly isn’t representative of the continents linguistic variety.
Apparently, the DPRK has both codified laws and what are essentially directions from the ruling party’s apparatuses throughout the country. The latter are known only to those enforcing same. Escapees from the country who have been imprisoned have often stated that they were never informed of what law or regulation they supposedly violated to get them sent to either prison or the camps.
Foreigners who defected to the country are married to other defectors or even to women who were abducted from overseas. On top of that, the local populace is not permitted, generally, to interact with foreigners.
During the hijacking fad the hijackers who went to Cuba wound up in Castro’s prisons, much to their surprise no doubt. I don’t recall any big effort to get them back. I’m with the we should say “pretty please, can we have our nutcase back?” and that is about it contingent.