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Category: Foreigners in N. Korea

May 12, 2014

N. Korea bans celebrated photographer Eric Lafforgue

North Korea has banned the French photographer Eric Lafforgue, who in recent years had captured some of the most remarkably unfiltered images of North Korea not taken from outer space. At Business Insider, Lafforgue explains how a group of North Korean sympathizers from Spain ratted him out over a careless comment about their Kim Jong-Il t-shirts (really!), which shows you how freely some citizens of liberal societies imbibe the local quisling culture in the name of solidarity. As with so much...

Categories Censorship/Foreigners in N. Korea
April 27, 2014

Ghost of Darwin promoting tours of North Korea. Selectively.

I can’t improve much on of the latest American doofus to get himself arrested in North Korea, despite all my considerate public service warnings to stay the f**k out of there. For some people, neither ethics nor personal safety are good enough reasons to heed these. In fact, some North Korea tour companies claim that arrests are good for their business. If this is true, it’s cause for us to reflect on how quickly the genetic blessings of natural selection...

Categories Foreigners in N. Korea
December 10, 2013

Why Merrill Newman came home and Ken Bae didn’t.

By now, everyone knows that Merrill Newman has come home, but hardly anyone knows that Ken Bae is in the hospital after losing 50 pounds in a North Korean prison. What accounts for the difference in outcomes? One reason, I’m afraid, is the cultural tendency of Koreans to feel that they have a certain ethnic “jurisdiction” over other ethnic Koreans — a tendency I’ve certainly observed in South Korea, too. Korean-American friends of mine, who were culturally just as American as...

Categories Foreigners in N. Korea
December 6, 2013

KCNA: Newman deported from North Korea

Via KNCA (ht Yonhap), Merrill Newman has won the grand prize in North Korea’s national lottery. Pyongyang, December 7 (KCNA) — As already reported, a relevant institution of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) detained and investigated U.S. citizen Merrill Edward Newman who entered the DPRK under the guise of a tourist to confirm the whereabouts of the spies and terrorists who had been trained and dispatched by him, an intelligence officer, during the last Korean War. According to the investigation,...

Categories Foreigners in N. Korea
December 2, 2013

Merrill Newman’s real “offensive” was booking a tour of North Korea in the first place.

Just last week, I predicted that we were entering the provocation phase of North Korea’s mood cycle. The day after I wrote that we’d soon read of “satellite theater” and steam coming from reactors, the IAEA said that North Korea had restarted Yongbyon. The day after that, North Korea released a hostage video of an 85-year old tourist with a heart condition, after forcing him to sign a “confession” to war crimes that he’d allegedly committed 60 years ago. Or at least,...

Categories Foreigners in N. Korea
November 21, 2013

Say, do you suppose Merrill Newman bought the wrong North Korea travel guide?

The San Jose Mercury News identifies the U.S. citizen arrested in North Korea three weeks ago — yes, that’s right — as Merrill Newman, age 85, of Palo Alto, California. He was arrested on October 26th, when the North Koreans pulled him off his flight out of Pyongyang Sunan before it took off. For whatever reason, we’re only just hearing about it now, although dozens more Americans might have entered North Korea since then, and might have benefited from knowing that the North Koreans...

Categories Foreigners in N. Korea/Useful Idiocy
November 20, 2013

It’s time to ban travel to North Korea

In one form or another, the State Department has been cautioning Americans about travel to North Korea for years, but statistically, half of the U.S. population is of below average intelligence, and it often shows. That fact presents some complications for a government that feels a sense of duty to protect the safety of its citizens. Today, as Kenneth Bae’s health continues to decline in his North Korean prison cell, comes word that the North has taken another miguk hostage. Although...

Categories Foreigners in N. Korea
June 20, 2011

Chosun Ilbo: Laura Ling and Euna Lee Were Lured into N. Korea

Let’s start with the claim, that North Korean spymaster Ryu Kyong recruited the mysterious guide who led Laura Ling and Euna Lee to that remote place along the Tumen River, then across to North Korea where guards were waiting. Subsequent reports fill in the rest — that Ling and Lee heard a commotion, ran back across the river into Chinese territory, and that the North Koreans pursued them across the river and dragged them back across and into captivity in...

Categories Ling/Lee Incident/Refugees/Terrorism (NK)
April 21, 2011

Robert Park Op-Ed in the Washington Post

Despite my rather complex views of Mr. Park, one can say that keeping these issues in the public eye means something good coming of his ill-advised actions.  At least now, people should disregard that televised “confession” of his.  Speaking of North Korea and hostage negotiations, don’t miss Claudia Rosett’s revelations about what the North Koreans really think of Jimmy Carter. Oh, and a Japanese newspaper is reporting that the North Koreans have arrested two Japanese on drug charges. Seriously.  What...

Categories Robert Park
September 2, 2010

Jimmy Carter’s Trip to North Korea Was a Raging Success, and Here’s Why

First, Carter brought Aijalon Gomes home. Second, he apparently gave away nothing in exchange. Third, he felt so snubbed he hasn’t even been on the talk show / op-ed circuit (at least not yet, fingers crossed) telling everyone how prepared North Korea really is for dialogue. Fourth, Carter’s apparently intentional snubbing has demonstrated to most vaguely reasonable minds that North Korea is not ready for dialogue, and that not even Carter’s generous assistance to North Korea’s nuclear program has earned...

Categories Aijalon Gomes/Useful Idiocy
August 24, 2010

Nothing Good Can Possibly Come of This

I posit the following: Jimmy Carter would not have agreed to go to North Korea had North Korea not agreed to release Aijalon Gomes. The North Koreans know Carter is the best friend they have in this country, and not even they are foolish enough to humiliate him by sending him home empty handed. I also posit that North Korea would not have induced Carter’s visit without the expectation of some benefit to the regime. At a minimum, they can...

Categories Aijalon Gomes
July 30, 2010

Free Aijalon Gomes

It should go without saying that I am in sympathy with the goals of Robert Park and Aijalon Gomes, and in complete disagreement that they advanced those goals through their quixotic walks into North Korea. Most people today only remember Park for his bizarre confession and his crypic references to the sort of sexual torture that, without knowing more, sounded like something more than a few of us have purchased for our friends at bachelor parties in our boorish youth....

Categories Aijalon Gomes
July 10, 2010

If there was ever any cognizable justice in holding Gomes in a prison cell for peacefully presenting a petition to North Korean border guards, it ended months ago. North Korea says an American man being held for illegally crossing its border has tried to kill himself. A statement issued by the regime’s official Korean Central News Agency says Aijalon Mahli Gomes’ suicide attempt was “driven by his strong guilty conscience,” plus disappointment and despair that the U.S. government “has not...

Categories Aijalon Gomes/Anju Links/Deprogramming/Kim Jong Il/Kremlinology/NK Military/Propaganda/Reconstruction/Refugees
June 4, 2010

Laura Ling Names Baby After Clinton

Inappropriate snickering will not be tolerated: Laura Ling told CBS News Chief Legal Correspondent Jan Crawford on CBSNews.com’s “Washington Unplugged” last Friday that while imprisoned in North Korea she remembered thinking that she would never be able start a family. But last night, nearly a year removed from her capture, Ling and her husband, Iain Clayton, celebrated the birth of their first child. And according to People Magazine, as a tribute to former president Bill Clinton and his work in...

Categories Ling/Lee Incident
April 26, 2010

Current TV Will Air Documentary on Ling-Lee Incident

You know, I was just thinking that it’s been a while since we’ve had a nice flame war over this. The network announced Sunday that Laura Ling and Euna Lee will tell their story in a 30-minute episode that will kick off the fourth season of the documentary series “Vanguard” on May 19. The journalists, both staffers for the series, were held captive by the North Koreans for more than four months after they briefly entered the country by crossing...

Categories Ling/Lee Incident
April 8, 2010

Tremble, Commies!

Forwarded by a friend: WASHINGTON, D.C. ““ Today, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-MA) issued the following statement in response to the conviction of American Aijalon Gomes by a North Korean court. Senator Kerry called on the DPRK to release Mr. Gomes immediately on a humanitarian basis: “This is a mother’s worst nightmare and a horrific situation. This young man belongs in Massachusetts with his family, and I join with them in expressing my hope that North Korea...

Categories Aijalon Gomes/U.S. Politics
April 7, 2010

North Korean “Court” Sentences Aijalon Gomes to 8 Years at Hard Labor

North Korea’s sham legal system has sentenced U.S. citizen Aijalon Gomes to 8 years at hard labor and a ransom fine of $70,000 for walking across the border into North Korea. An American has been sentenced to eight years of hard labor and fined the equivalent of $700,000 for illegal entry into North Korea. Aijalon Mahli Gomes, 30, who had taught English in South Korea, is the fourth U.S. citizen in the past year to walk into North Korea from...

Categories Aijalon Gomes