Australian arrested in North Korea

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jun/27/australian-student-alek-sigley-reportedly-arrested-in-north-korea

Head to North Korea for a master's ... Ok...

Decide to set up a side hustle business providing tours for tourists and posting social media about the place a lot. .... What could possibly go wrong?

Why risk going to a place where you risk ending a pawn in a political game at the whim of a pudgy dictator and then attract attention showing tourists around the place and posting / writing articles, even if they may be have not been critical...

Madness

bear1

I don't usually pity those that go to a country known for punishing the smallest thing and then going ahead and break their rules.

branie2

He should have read up on the country before entering it.

ILoveYourVibes

Well that was really really naive.

razorblunt

At least they haven't opened an Outback there.

Woke Hogan

glasso wrote: »

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jun/27/australian-student-alek-sigley-reportedly-arrested-in-north-korea

Head to North Korea for a master's ... Ok...

Decide to set up a side hustle business providing tours for tourists and posting social media about the place a lot. .... What could possibly go wrong?

Why risk going to a place where you risk ending a pawn in a political game at the whim of a pudgy dictator and then attract attention showing tourists around the place and posting / writing articles, even if they may be have not been critical...

Madness

Too many rhetorical questions. If you have a point it's best to say it straight out.

Gatling

Hopefully he doesn't get a bad dose of food poisoning , foreign students tend not to recover

Woke Hogan

Woke Hogan wrote: »

Too many rhetorical questions. If you have a point it's best to say it straight out.

That's just the way I roll

Rawr

I can only wonder if his plan was give himself a bit of an edge if North Korea opened up more in the future. Getting a masters there and living there for a bit might help in such a plan.

However, I do also believe he's been very foolhardy here. Pyongyang has a long track record of grabbing foreigners whenever they fancy some leverage. Now, it's very possible that he's done nothing at all wrong, but then again apparently his thesis was on North Korean Propaganda....so he might have written something in that which really pissed them off.

Another curious thing is that he got married in North Korea last year. I going to guess married to a North Korean...which might explain why he moved there.

suicide_circus

silly boy

Lackadaisical

The article also says he just submitted his thesis. It’s quite possible that someone has taken offense to anything they deem critical of the regime.

The problem somewhere like that is you could have an relatively open minded academic and then some official who takes a hardline view of anything remotely critical or even curious about the regime.

It would be a very strange place to do any kind of academic research.

Hope he’s ok.

topper75

Rawr wrote: »

I going to guess married to a North Korean...which might explain why he moved there.

You tend not to meet them at the disco in Lahinch though.

Rawr

Rawr wrote: »

Another curious thing is that he got married in North Korea last year. I going to guess married to a North Korean...which might explain why he moved there.

his wife is Japanese

TheValeyard

Regardless of how naive or silly he was, I do hope he comes back home alive and well and not like that American student Otto, in 2017.

InTheShadows

And some people think human beings are the most intelligent species on the planet.

TheValeyard

TheValeyard wrote: »

Regardless of how naive or silly he was, I do hope he comes back home alive and well and not like that American student Otto, in 2017.

that was simply an awful awful story. you'd hope that he has a better chance being an Australian compared to an American.

hopefully they are just going to hold him for a short time to make a point of some sort and release him.

seamus

To be fair, I'm going to assume that someone who speaks Korean fluently, has studied North Korea extensively and lived there for a number of years, is going to know a lot more about the do's and the don'ts than your average traveller.

It's not like he arrived in January and started dealing drugs or something.

The OP misrepresents the guy. His business was above board and very public. https://tongiltours.com/ . Not some student making a few quid as a shady tour guide.

As someone said above, he just recently submitted his thesis. He also recently wrote this article for the Guardian.

If the article is anything to go by, he seems to write honestly and without any given agenda about whether he thinks things are good or bad.

Unfortunately NK is not known for being grateful for honest or even sympathetic appraisals. It does seem likely that someone has taken offence at something Sigley said (or didn't say) in this article or a tweet, or his thesis, and has now found himself on the wrong side.

If there is anyone in NK with the slightest bit of political cop on, they'll realise that if a foreigner is acting as an ambassador for your country, the last thing you do is prove all the detractors right by making him disappear.

Just shows what we already knew, north Korean leadership is nuts. Pity the Chinese went to war against the UN back in the 1950s and sent a million man army across the border because the UN had it won just before they did that. Now we have a crackpot with nuclear weapons, submarines and could flatten Seoul in minutes with conventional artillery.....all stemming from the 1950s


Lol re reading that.... what a crazy world

Yurt2

Rawr wrote: »

I can only wonder if his plan was give himself a bit of an edge if North Korea opened up more in the future. Getting a masters there and living there for a bit might help in such a plan.

However, I do also believe he's been very foolhardy here. Pyongyang has a long track record of grabbing foreigners whenever they fancy some leverage. Now, it's very possible that he's done nothing at all wrong, but then again apparently his thesis was on North Korean Propaganda....so he might have written something in that which really pissed them off.

Another curious thing is that he got married in North Korea last year. I going to guess married to a North Korean...which might explain why he moved there.

His wife is Japanese according to media reports.

Oink

It is frankly ridiculous that a country can’t say fvck this particular citizen, we told him not to go. Or else they should not be allowed to go to NK until they’ve saved their own money.

A country should also be allowed to say giz your passport back and go beg some other sucker country to take you in, just fvck off until then.

Sick and tired of those @$$holes.

new speculation on this guy

https://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/incidents/new-theories-link-australians-disappearance-in-north-korea-to-trump-visit-and-hostile-website/news-story/06df69f505492152375e89b45a629bf4

There has been speculation that Mr Sigley, a prolific blogger of all things North Korean, was placed in lockdown ahead of US President Donald Trump’s visit to South Korea for security reasons.

“There has been talk about a possible meeting between Trump and (North Korean leader) Kim Jong-un in the demilitarised zone of Panmunjom,” Dr Petrov told news.com.au.

“If Alek witnessed any preparations for this on the streets of Pyongyang, it’s possible they decided to play it safe and place him somewhere for security reasons because they don’t want these arrangements to get out.”

It's quite possibly that he did actually do something wrong.

In Hanoi in the last year, a foreigner burnt his Vietnamese girlfriend alive during a fight. Everyone who knew him couldn't believe it. Rumour has it he was in acid that day.


It's around 95% chance this is politics, and 5% that he did something wrong. If that piece of shlt in Hanoi had done the same in North Korea, the initial world reaction would be the same as every other time someone gets arrested in North Korea.

so the theory about Trump meeting Mr Pudge in the DMZ was correct.

wouldn't be surprised if this guy re-appears unharmed in the very near future.

Church on Tuesday

I have a feeling this will not end well for this individual...