Body
Exactly why the North holds detainees is somewhat of a mystery. In some cases, individuals may in fact be involved in subversive activities from the perspective of the regime; in others, it seems more a product of whim or gambit. In the case of Otto Warmbier, the answer can be found in the compulsion to construct conspiracies against North Korea and to use them for domestic political advantage. Thanks to yet another painful confession, we now have the proximate cause of Warmbier’s detention: he attempted unsuccessfully to steal a political banner out of the employee’s-only section of his hotel. But not for the college-student Pyongyang trophy it obviously was; rather, this “serious crime” came at the behest of a church, in order to undermine the morale of North Korean workers (at the behest of the US government) and for financial gain, with opportunism vis-a-vis a secret college society thrown in for good measure. According to The Guardian’s coverage, “Warmbier said he was offered a used car worth $10,000 by a member of the church. He said the church member told him the slogan would be hung on its wall as a trophy. He also said he was told that if he was detained and not returned, $200,000 would be paid to his mother in a way of charitable donations.” He said he accepted the offer because his family is “suffering from very severe financial difficulties.” As always, CNN was deftly used by North Korea to broadcast their message, and their account adds more theater-of-the-absurd detail.
The last time I checked e-Bay, North Korean propaganda banners were not fetching six figures. But the value of humiliating foreigners with earnest confessions, replete with positive references to the fairness of the DPRK legal system? Priceless.
Warmbier was detained on January 2, four days before the fourth nuclear test, and has been kept out of the spotlight until this week. We can’t see any plausible way that Warmbier’s detention could play into the larger policy debate and the endgame negotiations over sanctions at the UN; the US is certainly not going to trade him for anything of real value. It looks like more hapless work for the State Department and the Swedes, who manage US interests with the DPRK.
But the case once again raises serious questions that my colleague Marc Noland has been asking about the tourism industry for some time, and most recently here. How long can the adventure tourism industry continue to sell North Korea to our nominally-progressive youth as an exotic location worthy of visit? The most recent State Department travel advisory can be linked here. Safe travels.
Previous Posts on the Detainees
- More Detainees: Otto Warmbier and Kim Dong Chul (January 2016)
- Detainees and Envoys(April 2013; on the possible North Korean motive of securing visits by high level envoys)
- Detained Americans: Not-So-Innocents Abroad (September 2013; brief outlines of the American detainees)
- Merrill Newman “Confesses” (November 2013)
- Why is Kenneth Bae Treated More Harshly than John Short? (March 2014)
- Miller Matthew Todd (April 2014; how Miller’s name was initially reported by KCNA)
- State Department Travel Advisory Update (June 2014)
- Slave to the Blog: Abductions and Detainees Edition (June 2014; Fowle detention)
- Detainee Update and Canadians in Dandong (early August 2014 stories on the three Americans and the sweep against Christians along the Chinese side of the border)
- The Release of Jeffrey Fowle (October 2014)
- Bae and Miller Released, The Excellent Adventures of Matthew Todd Miller and James Clapperand The Hostage Rorschach Test (November 2014)
- Arturo Pierre Mendez
- Mike Chinoy on Merrill Newman
- Kim Kuk-ki and Choe Chun-gil (March 2015)
- Detainee Fatigue: Won-Moon Joo (June 2015)
- Hyeon Soo Lim Update (August 2015)
- The Release of Won-Moon Joo (October 2015)
- State Department Travel Advisory Update (November 2015)
- Life Sentence for Hyeon Soo Lim (December 2015)
- Otto Warmbier and Kim Dong Chul (January 2015)
