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US Student sentenced to 15 years hard labour in North Korea

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Comments

  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,393 ✭✭✭PM me nudes


    Idiot.

    You don't do anything stupid in NK, especially as an American citizen


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 18,299 ✭✭✭✭The Backwards Man


    Rambo would get him out.

    Instead they'll send some diplomat that the DPR can claim is there for peace talks in light of the NK's developing nuclear superiority.

    Send in Rambo instead, ya loons. And get him to shoot him in the leg for being such an idiot.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 38,227 ✭✭✭✭Guy:Incognito


    Otto Warm Beer ? Thats not a real person.:D


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 4,041 ✭✭✭zl1whqvjs75cdy


    Why in the name of God would you go to North Korea. Even if you're stupid enough to go you'd have to be a special kind of clown to give them any reason to lock you up. The sentence is obviously ridiculous but the fool put himself in harms way.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 6,168 ✭✭✭Ursus Horribilis


    He has become a pawn for the North Koreans, pure and simple. That county is such a basket case they'd nearly arrest you for leaving the toilet seat up.


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 3,419 ✭✭✭cowboyBuilder


    Crazy, a labour camp in NK is absolute hell, he will die there, the US should launch a commando style operation to rescue one of it's citizens.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 3,419 ✭✭✭cowboyBuilder


    Lots of victim blaming on here.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 3,507 ✭✭✭Buona Fortuna


    If he'd been imprisoned for being a feckin stoopid amercan youth - no one could argue.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 19,801 ✭✭✭✭suicide_circus


    1. If you're an American, don't go to North Korea where they think Americans are literally the devil.

    2. If you're an American in North Korea, don't steal any ****ing posters.

    3. God help the chap, he better hope for a quick death rather than living through 15 years of North Korean hard labour,


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 3,419 ✭✭✭cowboyBuilder


    Now girls, don't be wearing short skirts when you go out, you don't want any unwanted attention... :rolleyes:


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 5,191 ✭✭✭Eugene Norman


    Poor guy. Won't do wonders for their tourist industry though.


  • Posts: 18,046 ✭✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    Why in the name of God would you go to North Korea. Even if you're stupid enough to go you'd have to be a special kind of clown to give them any reason to lock you up. The sentence is obviously ridiculous but the fool put himself in harms way.

    Loads of people go. It's supposed to be really interesting to go through the facade of wealth and happiness. I'd quite like to go to the Arirang Games some time.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,087 ✭✭✭Potatoeman


    Now girls, don't be wearing short skirts when you go out, you don't want any unwanted attention... :rolleyes:

    That would be true in Saudi Arabia. You should be aware of the culture you are a guest of.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 4,789 ✭✭✭Alf Stewart.




  • Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 2,231 ✭✭✭Jim Bob Scratcher


    Rambo would get him out.

    Instead they'll send some diplomat that the DPR can claim is there for peace talks in light of the NK's developing nuclear superiority.

    Send in Rambo instead, ya loons. And get him to shoot him in the leg for being such an idiot.

    The only hope he has now is Dennis Rodman


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 19,801 ✭✭✭✭suicide_circus


    gctest50 wrote: »
    No, he's not worth saving - any cop on at all and he'd have professed his love for their great leader and tell them he wanted the poster for his bedroom wall
    pretty sure they beat whatever confession they wanted out of him


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,039 ✭✭✭B_Wayne


    gctest50 wrote: »
    No, he's not worth saving - any cop on at all and he'd have professed his love for their great leader and tell them he wanted the poster for his bedroom wall

    However idiotic his decision was, wouldn't wish a NK labour camp on anyone and hope he gets out.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 6,934 ✭✭✭MarkAnthony


    Victim? He's a criminal in their eyes.

    TBH in AH I would have thought people would have thought this was a reasonable sentance.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,026 ✭✭✭12Phase


    The "confession" also sounds extremely scripted and wasn't in very natural sounding language. I assume they promise to release you if you read the script. Then it's spun for propaganda.

    Going there is very risky, especially if you're from the US.

    I would honestly doubt though that anyone making that trip is going to do it for giggles. It's not an easy place to get to. In most cases I would say it's genuine curiosity. It's one of the strangest places on earth.

    The sense I'm getting is maybe he was chatting and mucking about with the local staff and getting too casual and some senior official decided to grasp the opportunity to arrest a US citizen.

    They've been threatening to nuke the US and the US has moved stealth aircraft into the area etc etc

    The poor guy is potentially in for absolute hell on earth though.

    He's so blatantly stand out that I think it's extremely unlikely he's any kind of spy. He'd be the worst spy ever!


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,687 ✭✭✭andekwarhola


    Surely this will be the final straw for niche, risk-tourism.

    At least students can say I was there before politically-motivated draconian incarceration went mainstream.


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 18,966 ✭✭✭✭syklops


    People of Ireland take note. It turns out "It was only for a bit of craic" is not a valid excuse in North Korea.

    I feel sorry for the guy. I really do. One will hope that maybe an agreement could be reached on getting him expatriated. Maybe Denis Rodman could issue an appeal?

    I wouldnt call it victim blaming though. Its not like he nicked the shampoo bottles from his hotel. He stole what he thought was hotel property, but was actually state property. Now I know he never thought for a second he would be stopped, nevermind be pursued by state police and prosecuted, but they take that sort of thing seriously in NK.

    If I was handed his sentence, I wouldnt be long for this earth.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,409 ✭✭✭old_aussie


    Why in the name of God would you go to North Korea. Even if you're stupid enough to go you'd have to be a special kind of clown to give them any reason to lock you up. The sentence is obviously ridiculous but the fool put himself in harms way.

    Some people will do anything for some selfie lolz


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 33,782 ✭✭✭✭RobertKK


    It is very sad what has happened to him, but if you are in North Korea, you are there to only see what what you are allowed to see and take what you are allowed to take.
    Do what you are told and get back out safely, or better still don't go as there are so many other places to go on the planet.

    He will be out in a number of months which is what happened in previous cases where hard labour was the punishment for US prisoners. He is not a very unfortunate North Korean who is sent to a labour camp and who may end up as dog food, which is one of the things the UN reported about North Korea who compared North Korean human rights violations to that of the Nazis.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,026 ✭✭✭12Phase


    Do we even know he did anything at all?

    This is North Korea you're talking about... During a period of high tension too.

    I would take everything with a giant shovel of salt never mind a pinch.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 166 ✭✭bill66


    Can't do the time? don't do the crime!............. especially in NK


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 17,495 ✭✭✭✭eviltwin


    I've just been having a read of what hard labour in north Korea actually consists of. It's like hell on earth. Poor guy, he did something stupid but he doesn't deserve this.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 18,966 ✭✭✭✭syklops


    12Phase wrote: »
    Do we even know he did anything at all?

    This is North Korea you're talking about... During a period of high tension too.

    I would take everything with a giant shovel of salt never mind a pinch.

    When leaving NK, I would assume all your bags are thoroughly searched. In fact I'd be certain you would be told by your travel operator to assume your bags will be searched, on the way out. That alone would be incentive not to take anything with you, so as you say during a period of heightened tension, maybe the flag was placed in his belongings.

    Then a bit of "you are only making it worse for yourself by denying it, you'll get a lightened sentence by admitting it". Next thing you have is an open and shut case.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,200 ✭✭✭Arbiter of Good Taste


    syklops wrote: »
    People of Ireland take note. It turns out "It was only for a bit of craic" is not a valid excuse in North Korea.

    That's a good rule of thumb for many places. A lot of Irish people act like tools as soon as they board an airplane off the island.


  • Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 2,231 ✭✭✭Jim Bob Scratcher


    eviltwin wrote: »
    I've just been having a read of what hard labour in north Korea actually consists of. It's like hell on earth. Poor guy, he did something stupid but he doesn't deserve this.

    Indeed, scary stuff

    From wiki

    Former guard An Myong-chol describes the conditions in the camp as harsh and life-threatening.[23] He recalls the shock he felt upon his first arrival at the camp, where he likened the prisoners to walking skeletons, dwarfs, and cripples in rags.[12][24] An estimates that about 30% of the prisoners have deformities, such as torn off ears, smashed eyes, crooked noses, and faces covered with cuts and scars resulting from beatings and other mistreatment. Around 2,000 prisoners, he says, have missing limbs, but even prisoners who need crutches to walk must still work.[25] Prisoners get 180 g (6.3 oz) of corn per meal (two times a day), with almost no vegetables and no meat.[26] The only meat in their diets is from rats, snakes or frogs that they catch.[12][27] Ahn estimates that 1,500–2,000 people die of malnutrition there every year, mostly children.[14] Despite these deaths, the inmate population remains constant, suggesting that around 1,500–2,000 new inmates arrive each year.[28] Children get only very basic education.[29] From six years on they get work assigned, such as picking vegetables, peeling corn or drying rice, but they receive very little food, only 180 g (6.3 oz) in total per day. Therefore, many children die before the age of ten years.[30] Elderly prisoners have the same work requirements as other adults.[31] Seriously ill prisoners are quarantined, abandoned, and left to die.[32]

    Single prisoners live in bunkhouses with 100 people in one room. As a reward for good work, families are often allowed to live together in a single room of a small house without running water.[33] But the houses are in poor condition; the walls are made from mud and have a lot of cracks.[34] All prisoners have to use dirty and crowded communal toilets.[35]

    Prisoners have to do hard physical labour in agriculture, mining and factories from 5:00 am to 8:00 pm (7:00 pm in winter),[13] followed by ideological re-education and self-criticism sessions.[36] New Year’s Day is the only holiday for prisoners.[37] The mines are not equipped with safety measures and, according to Ahn, prisoners were killed almost every day. They have to use primitive tools, such as shovels and picks, and are forced to work to exhaustion.[19] When there was a fire or a tunnel collapsed, prisoners were abandoned inside and left to die.[38] Kwon Hyuk reported that corpses are simply loaded into cargo coaches together with the coal to be burnt in a melting furnace.[18] The coal is supplied to Chongjin Power Plant, Chongjin Steel Mill and Kimchaek Steel Mill,[39] while the food is supplied to the State Security Agency or sold in Pyongyang and other parts of the country.[19]


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 12,247 ✭✭✭✭BoJack Horseman


    eviltwin wrote: »
    I've just been having a read of what hard labour in north Korea actually consists of. It's like hell on earth. Poor guy, he did something stupid but he doesn't deserve this.

    It may not go so terribly.

    It was only a couple of years ago that Kenneth Bae was sentenced to 15 years labour & was released after less than 1 year.... he spent his time working 8 hour days doing farm labour.

    ..... or it might go very badly altogether.

    But I've a feeling he will be used as leverage to bargain for some sort of assistance for the NK government from the USA via China.


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