North Korea has not released any information about the US soldier who entered South Korea without a permit earlier this week. Private citizen Travis King is believed to have been taken to a regime prison controlled by dictator Kim Jongun on a secondclass basis. The soldier crossed the crossing during a tourist trip he took after escaping from his army unit’s detention on the South Korean side for assaulting a local man. North Americans were never welcome in the north of the peninsula. Others have been arrested for a variety of reasons, including without evidence of a crime.
A country under a dictatorship that ignores global human rights conventions maintains diplomatic relations with few nations Technically at war with South Korea for over half a century although the bombing stopped in 1953 , in constant verbal conflict with the US and with threats to hit enemy countries with nuclear warheadsis not friendly to foreign tourists who are eager to capture the maximum amount of images of North Korean scenarios and citizens, regardless of the visitor’s origin and the amount of money they are willing to leave behind for Kim Jongun.
It is possible to enter North Korea via the border with China by booking a travel package through an accredited agency and following a number of rules. But it is very difficult to move around the cities and streets. Mainly because of its rural areas, where, according to international organizations, there is misery, hunger and forced labor camps. There is no freedom of movement outside the accommodation. Communiststate agents always accompany visitors on the rigid itinerary, which is usually based on a visit to the capital, although some also include a trip to the demilitarized zone bordering South Korea, which Travis King crossed this week.
Tourists who have used the services of an agency in Beijing do not even have the opportunity to choose their hotel and itinerary. It is also not possible to leave the hotel without the tour guide or without his permission. Even in the hotel there is a risk of being arrested for even the simplest and most innocent behavior from a foreign perspective like that which led to the arrest of American student Otto Warmbier in January 2016. The case exposed the world to the risks of visiting North Korea.
He was sentenced to 15 years in prison for hard labor for tearing down a political propaganda poster in the hallway of the hotel where he was staying and served 17 months in a North Korean prison. “Let’s arm ourselves strong with Kim Jongil’s patriotism!” read the message of the poster. Causing damage of any kind or even stealing materials bearing the name or image of a North Korean leader is considered a serious crime by the North Korean government Kim Jongil, the country’s former president, is Kim Jongun’s father.
The student died in a coma a week after returning home in June 2017. In the version approved by Kim Jongun, Warmbier suffered a neurological injury from an alleged accident in prison shortly after sentencing. Already on North American territory, where he got out on a stretcher from an aircraft intensive care unitDoctors at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center said he was “in an unresponsive waking state” commonly known as the sustained vegetative state.
Otto Warmbier could breathe and blink his eyes on his own, but otherwise showed no signs of being aware of his surroundings. According to his medical team, brain scans revealed that Warmbier suffered significant loss of brain tissue throughout the region, consistent with a cardiopulmonary event that left the head deprived of oxygen. There was a suspicion that he had undergone a lobotomy. After her parents asked to remove the feeding tube, He died in hospital at 2:20 p.m. on June 19, 2017 at the age of 22. The cause of death was never revealed as the student’s parents would not allow an autopsy of the body only an external postmortem was performed.
“Cheap Trips To Places Your Mom Wouldn’t Want To Visit”
Otto Warmbier, a student at the University of Virginia, was curious about the world and wanted to see everything, his father said in an April 2017 interview.
From Beijing, the meeting point, the group which included 10 other US citizens would board a flight to Pyongyang, where they would stay for just five days. The student was arrested on the last night of the tour after having a drink with fellow travelers in the hotel bar. He got to a floor reserved for state officials and agents only and came across the poster he wanted to take as a souvenir.
Warmbier’s father, Fred, accused companies promoting tourism in North Korea of ”feeding” the dictatorial regime. Finally, he stressed, tours are one of the ways Kim Jongun found to evade sanctions and allow foreign currency to enter the country.
After the student’s death, the United States decided to ban its citizens from entering Kim Jongun’s country. The measure still applies. Young Pioneer Tours said it will no longer include US citizens on the tours it organizes. The travel agent said it was denied any opportunity to meet Warmbier after his arrest and said the way authorities handled his case was “shocking”.
The other two major travel agencies that organize such tours, UKbased Koryo Tours and New Jerseybased Uri Tours, announced in July 2017 that they were “reviewing” the sale of North Korea tour packages to US customers. All companies have had tourists in North Korea detained, but none with the serious consequences of Warmbier.
At the same time, other Americans were stuck in North Korea, but none had traveled to the country as tourists. They worked there, two at a KoreanAmerican private university and one at a hotel in a special economic zone in the north of the country — an area reserved for domestic and foreign companies.
Renato AlvesReporter and editor of THE TIME In Brasilia he was in North Korea in 2017. During the successful North Korean hydrogen bomb test, he was the only western journalist in the country. He is the author of The Hermit Kingdom: a journalist in North Korea, published in 2018 by Minas Gerais publishers QuixoteDo.
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