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Hostages in the Hermit Kingdom (Current)When we set out, we had no intention of leaving China, but when our guide beckoned for us to follow him beyond the middle of the river, we did, eventually arriving at the riverbank on the North Korean side. He pointed out a small village in the distance where he told us that North Koreans waited in safe houses to be smuggled into China via a well-established network that has escorted tens of thousands across the porous border.
Feeling nervous about where we were, we quickly turned back toward China. Midway across the ice, we heard yelling. We looked back and saw two North Korean soldiers with rifles running toward us. Instinctively, we ran.
We were firmly back inside China when the soldiers apprehended us. Producer Mitch Koss and our guide were both able to outrun the border guards. We were not. We tried with all our might to cling to bushes, ground, anything that would keep us on Chinese soil, but we were no match for the determined soldiers. They violently dragged us back across the ice to North Korea and marched us to a nearby army base, where we were detained. Over the next 140 days, we were moved to Pyongyang, isolated from one another, repeatedly interrogated and eventually put on trial and sentenced to 12 years of hard labor.
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Anyone have any insight on why the Chinese aren't publicly irate about the apparent occasional invasion of their sovereign soil by the North Korean military? Obviously I am missing something.
Because it doesn't officially happen?
Because calling out NK for the pain in the butt would probably just mean a larger pain in the butt?
Oh Jeez, and what did I do today!?
even the Chinese border guards are disgusted by what they see. For example: a young woman escaping from North Korea, turned back and when grabbed by the NK guards, tethered by ramming a sharpened steel cable through her palm and dragged away like an animal.
I hope the three backpackers who mistakenly stumbled into Iran and are being held without word meet a similar happy ending.
http://www.freethehikers.org
even the Chinese border guards are disgusted by what they see.
How easier it is to condemn the others, how freely does the outrage flows then...
Oh Jeez, and what did I do today!?
One possibility: you went to work, did your best and came back to the ones you love, who loves you, bypassing being thrown in an NK jail and putting them to emotional torture? Is it that bad?
The worst thing about all this is that these two got caught with al lot of their interview material and most of their pictures on them. So anyone who talked to them is probably dead or wishes that they were.
Generally such people are sentenced to a decade or so of hard labour. If you don't manage to live out your sentence (a common occurrence) this is considered to be an insult against Dear Leader Kim as you are disobeying his command to spend N years working off your sins. So they desecrate your body, usually by crushing the skull to bits with one of the heavy hammers that are ubiquitous in the camps. One of the successful escapees used to be on skull crushing duty and still wakes up now and then from a nightmare where she's buried alive but someone's digging her up and coming at her with a hammer. "No, NO! Don't crush my head! I'm still alive!"
Since these atrocities don't involve Jews or Yanks nobody cares much. The suffering isn't useful in local, parochial politics so there's no profit in cranking up a big agi-prop machine to capitalise on it.
Actually, Nadreck, the pair did address the issue of protecting their interview subjects. Just a snippet:
"With guards right outside the room, we furtively destroyed evidence in our possession by swallowing notes and damaging videotapes. During rigorous, daily interrogation sessions, we took care to protect our sources and interview subjects."
The fact that such an excess can exist is outrageous. It shatters my heart to even begin understanding the full scope of these North Korean atrocities. To be truthful, the reality of these labor camps has never known to me until late, and it is bad enough that I have remained so ignorant so far- but it is worse to realize the ineffectual efforts of the world to halt, to put a permanent end to, labor camps.
I understand this world to be rife with the horrors of human nature, occurring in warring African jungles to subtler violations nearer home, and each one justly deserves attention, but this is one of the worst (if one can rate such things). Unlike the occurrences in African hotspots, this horror is fully on the conscience of a country which obviously does not deserve its sovereignty.
@1 Because the DPRK is like China's embarrassing drunk screw-up cousin... they may constantly disappoint, but they are still family.
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OK, perfect example of the difference between communists & socialists: Socialists don't do this kind of stuff. Communists do.
And it just so happens to be the 70th anniversary of the Von Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact that ultimately led to WWII and a permanent split between the Socie's & the Commie's.
Needless to say, the Poles are not celebrating. The Rooskies are still lying about it. And the Germans? Well, the bastards will probably never finish apologizing & atoning for everything their "National Socialists" did, including deliberately confusing people as to what was socialism and what was Fascism. People like FuxSnooze, today. So, um, history lives. Let's hope we're not condemned to re-live it.
Maybe some day Korea will be de-partitioned. Guess it's up to the Fascists and the Commie's.
Glad the girls made it back home. Boy, I bet their Moms were PISSED! "You were WHERE???!!!"
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While I can't support the NK gov't, why is it that people are acting as if these women did nothing wrong?
Hell, international law allows for hot pursuit, and if I were a gov't and someone were to come into a top secret area (how ever I may define that...if it were my country, it'd ALL be top secret!) -- I'd go to great lengths to bring them back to face the law of the land.
Again, I don't support the NK gov't -- they are pretty bad as nations go, but don't kid yourself...the country followed international law in this regard. They mistreat their people, starve and torture them, they make idle threats of nuclear destruction while in fact making dirty bombs, they lob missiles over other countries air space (though technically, far enough over that I believe is legal...how far up do you have to be to be in international air?)...they are a horrible country. At the same time, they followed the laws of hot pursuit in this case, and the reporters knew they were in a country where this sort of thing happens.
Personally, I'm glad there are people willing to take the risk and suffer the consequences, but they did break the law.
It is not international law to cross international borders and drag citizens of other countries across them, regardless of what they've done.
Why do you think the extradition process exists? Precisely because you can't do that.
Cliffy, before World War II there were no passports, humans had the right to go wherever they wanted as long as they didn't hurt anything.
I honor this on my land, I allow the kids to fish my creek as long as they respect the property. If they damage anything I'll fire rock salt over their heads and scare the hell out of them, true, but they all know I won't harm the harmless.
Don't drink the postwar koolaid.
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The US regularly went up to 50 miles into Canada to retrieve draft-dodgers during the Vietnam war. There have been skirmishes back and forth between Indians & Feds in Upstate NY & Ontario. We chase people across the Mexican border all the time. We bust into countries in the Caribbean and in Central America whenever we want.
A border is only as good as a nation's commitment to defend it. Our own are pretty porous, to civilians and foreign agents. But it has gotten harder for US, Mex. & Can. citizens to go back and forth on legitimate business at regular border crossings, unlike pre-9/11 days.
That said, you've got to be nuts to go sneaking around China on the N. Korean border.
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Nadreck:
They didn't interview anybody INSIDE North Korea. Anyone they interviewed was already outside of North Korea in the [relative] safety of the People's Republic of China.
Adam, some of the interviewee probably DO, however have relatives that still live in the DPRK. And that is a governemnt that certainly DOES believe in collective responsibility and so the routinely do punish the relatives of criminals.
Because the DPRK is like China's embarrassing drunk screw-up cousin... they may constantly disappoint, but they are still family.
I think of North Korea as Jan Brady; not as grown up as Japan or as exuberant as China, always ignored and always acting out to get attention.
Antinous: Good analogy. Even better if you mean the psychotic Jan from the Brady Bunch Movie.
@dculberson
"Why do you think the extradition process exists? Precisely because you can't do that."
You might want to look up law on International Hot Pursuit. It has been codified that countries may (at their own risk) pursue and arrest criminals that they are actively in pursuit.
Is it wise to do so? Not really...not if you don't want an international incident, but it is 'legal' (as legal as anything in international law...this depends on the countries agreeing to follow this...most have large portions of int law codied that they will follow it).
Extradition? This happens when hot pursuit is over. A sovereign country has the right to protect its borders, and if this means stopping someone from pursuing someone else in their borders, that too is legal. As such, most are not going to do this if it is dangerous / risky to the pursuer. And again, it comes to 'hot pursuit'...not just plain pursuit.
What you think is right and what the international community thinks is right may be different. Luckily, thats why law books exist so we don't need to ask random people on the street (that said, flaws may be found in my write up, but it is essentially correct).
You might want to look up law on International Hot Pursuit.
Where the crime was trespassing a couple of hundred feet in the middle of nowhere? I don't think so.
What you think is right and what the international community thinks is right may be different.
Maybe I've been completely misinterpreting the news for the last half-century, but I believe that the international community thinks that pretty much everything that North Korea does, including this, is a violation of international law.
Antinous,
Yes, that was the law. IF you own a country, you make the law. They knew what they were getting into and admitted knowing they were breaking a law.
Of course, I commend them for doing so, but it is the law. Hell, I've spent time in jails for breaking laws that I felt justified...I had an assault charge thrown against me for ripping off the mask of a klansman at a parade. The cop arrested me for my own protection and I stayed in jail for a couple of hours before they decided they weren't going to charge me for it (just long enough for the rally to be over). I can name a number of these incidents (mainly because I'm an idiot that doesn't learn from past mistakes!)
Honestly, what has happened to the belief that if one does something illegal -- but morally justified -- there should be no penalty. If there is no penalty, your actions are meaningless.
As for NK violating international law, yes they do...and I mentioned several actions that did in my first post. That doesn't mean that EVERYTHING is illegal. I mean, only a moron would make a statement claiming that EVERYTHING under ANY circumstance fall into a single category...and I mean that there are no exceptions to my rule because EVERYONE that says moronic statements about EVERYTHING is an idiot. No exceptions.
Seriously...they are a bad country. Everyone knows they are a bad country. That doesn't mean they don't follow some rules. Nor does it mean that countries around them can break the rules just because they do. That's the hard part about being moral...sometimes you have to accept that immoral people are allowed to do legal things for immoral purposes that we do not agree to. (Again, I don't always follow this principle, but I never claimed to be that moral of a person either).
IF you own a country, you make the law.
But you don't make international law, and they were no longer in North Korea. You're playing verbal twister trying to get these women thrown back into prison.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8240357.stm