When I lived in rural China (near NK Border) the electricity was more reliable than when I was in America.
This is true. There are multiple ways to enter North Korea. Most common one is going through a Chinese travel agency. You are giving North Korea money. There are other less common methods but it's more dangerous.
These tours basically are just you paying the north korean government to babysit you intensely for a few days. There's not much in NK and it sucks. Yeomni Park just makes it seem interesting because of all of the lies she spits from her mouth.
You must be talking about Otto Warmbier. My condolences to his family but I don't know what he was expecting when he was trying to steal a poster in a regime like North Korea. It was awful what happened to him and we all know NK was using him as a bargaining chip. Very tragic either way.
I 100% believe Warmbier attempted suicide, hence the brain damage.
There are a couple of authors (Laura and Lisa Ling, reporters, went big for this), who wrote books on being detained in NK. That one is called “Somewhere Inside”.
There was also a book by a missionary, I forget what it was called and didn’t like all the evangelizing in it or the idea of saving poor heathens for God, but if you strip out the religion, he was also detained and talks about it.
Both individuals mention that they were not physically hurt, except during the initial arrest (no police accountability plus isolation and xenophobia means they may initially hit or rough one up). However, once brought to Pyongyang and higher authorities, they were at least physically, basically safe. Your international bargaining chips stop working if they die or become a liability, so these individuals were even given basic healthcare so that no one could say “you ignored their needs/hurt them.”
HOWEVER, both accounts mention a ton of mindfuckery, and some use of noninvasive techniques that would harm a person without leaving marks- sleep deprivation, isolation, boredom and only being allowed to hear propaganda and interact with police/interrogators. During that isolation and bombardment, both of these individuals were lied to, told their government wasn’t helping and didn’t care, constantly gaslit about what they said/did and any changes to their accounts of their “crimes,” not allowed to do anything else but sit and think, threatened with long prison terms, and not allowed many basic comforts, even if items were sent to them through foreign consulates who wanted to help. Both were officially sentenced to over a decade in NK prison, but later pardoned in hostage diplomacy.
The reporter had a really hard time and couldn’t sleep, didn’t eat much, would constantly pace, and would even hit or pinch herself sometimes. And this was a woman who had done hardcore investigative journalism for years in all conditions and embedded with all types of people, who was already in her 30s. She had also researched NK and knew, broadly, what to expect. And they almost broke her.
Now imagine a sheltered 21 year old who hasn’t lived or worked in difficult conditions much, and crucially,
doesn’t have the faintest fucking clue how countries like NK often operate internationally. He wouldn’t know that the official prison sentence is really a feint, that it’s really used for domestic propaganda purposes only, and that in all other cases, within two months to a year of sentencing, the hostages are on their way home. It’s debatable whether the Lings or missionaries are completely aware of this, but probably knew this to an extent during their detainment.
So those other people could hear “10-15 years” and think “well, officially, but there’s room for change to that…” and hope for something.
Warmbier would have heard “10-15 years” and thought “oh god, oh fuck, I’m only 21; and these places are like where they sent my Jewish ancestors.” (He went on a birthright trip to Israel before, so he knew about the history there). We know that whatever happened to him happened the night after his sentencing.
Put that together with the data from his noninvasive brain scans. They didn’t release much publicly about it, but what stands out is the phrase “bilateral oxygen deprivation.”
Bilateral = not likely caused by a single head trauma, those affect more specific areas of the brain depending on the hit.
Oxygen deprivation = assuming Warmbier wasn’t drowned or waterboarded, which seems unlikely (NK doesn’t like to do anything physically risky to foreign detainees because they’re nothing as corpses or vegetables), something else happened, and it probably wasn’t entirely due to his captor’s actions.
How else can bilateral oxygen deprivation happen? Really only two ways outside of being choked or drowning.
1. A botched hanging. Hangings are meant to instantly snap a neck bone, the hyoid, but if the drop isn’t long or sudden enough or the person is too light for the drop force to break it and kill them, they’ll instead suffocate. Many suicide survivors who try hanging can end up with this.
2. An overdose of narcotics or tranquilizers. This is less likely than hanging, but one detainee account mentions being given early and less targeted tranquilizers because she was freaking out, yet NK medicine is in the 1950s at best. If these people did the same for Warmbier and didn’t constantly have eyes on him or just wanted to shut him up, he might have yoinked the whole bottle or been given too much if his guards changed and kept dosing him. With these types of overdoses, breathing then stops during sleep and essentially chokes the brain the same way as a hanging.
His parents didn’t want an autopsy for religious reasons, which was questioned, but that also tracks with not wanting people to know it may have actually been suicide.
