HOLIDAY IN HELL: NORTH KOREA
Maybe Eric Schmidt can get Merrill Newman out of Pyongyang.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304854804579236150756070232?mod=Opinion_newsreel_4
Thinking of taking a holiday in forbidden North Korea so that you can one-up your friends who spent two weeks in exotic Bhutan? The best advice: Don’t.
That’s a lesson being learned the hard way by Merrill Newman, a retired executive from California who visited North Korea in October for what was supposed to be a 10-day tour. Instead, the 85-year old Korean War vet was yanked off a plane and has been detained in a Pyongyang hotel for more than a month. State media recently released a video of Mr. Newman reading from a four-page statement in stilted English. “I have been guilty of a long list of indelible crimes against DPRK and Korean people,” it read. “Please forgive me.”
The Democratic People’s Republic is also holding Kenneth Bae, a Korean-American tour-company operator taken prisoner by the North last year and sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in April on accusations of committing “hostile [and religious] acts to bring down the government.” He has lost some 50 pounds and required hospitalization.
What the North has in mind for the Americans is hard to fathom. In March 2009, the regime seized U.S. journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee along the border with China and sentenced them to 12 years of labor. The pair were released that August after a meeting in Pyongyang between Bill Clinton and Kim Jong Il. Maybe the Dear Leader’s son and successor is angling for similar ex-presidential face time.
Whatever the younger Kim’s motives, the lesson for Americans is to avoid Pyongyang’s Hunger Games. That goes more for celebrities than average tourists.
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