Thursday marks third-year Commerce student Otto Warmbier’s 76th day of detainment in North Korea.
Warmbier was arrested Jan. 2 for allegedly attempting to stealing a political banner from the Yanggakdo International Hotel in Pyongyang. Warmbier was on a trip with Young Pioneer Tours at the time of his arrest.
On March 16, Warmbier was found guilty of subversion under Article 60 of the DPRK Criminal Code and was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor.
“In the course of the inquiry, the accused confessed to the serious offense against the DPRK he had committed, pursuant to the U.S. government's hostile policy toward it, in a bid to impair the unity of its people after entering it as a tourist,” the Korean Central News Agency reported.
The trial before the North Korean Supreme Court lasted one hour, the Associated Press reported.
During the trial, Warmbier signed a certificate of indictment and a statement of guilt, Reuters reporter James Pearson tweeted.
A Swedish diplomat was present at the trial. Prior to the trial, a Swedish official met with Warmbier on March 2. No details from their meeting have been released, but the U.S. State Department, on whose behalf the Swedish Embassy serves as a protecting power, remains in contact with the Swedish Embassy, State Department Deputy Spokesperson Mark Toner said.
The U.S. does not have formal diplomatic relations with North Korea and strongly advises against U.S. tourism there.
Previous cases
Warmbier is the 12th American citizen to be detained in North Korea since 1996.
Of the 12 Americans detained, 10 have been released, and two — including Warmbier — are currently being held in the DPRK. The other American currently imprisoned in North Korea is Kim Dong Chul, who was arrested in Oct. 2015 on espionage charges.
The average stay for released detainees is 200 days, ranging from Merrill Newman’s 43 days of detainment to Kenneth Bae’s 736 days of being imprisoned. Newman was accused of espionage in relation to his service in the Korean War, and Bae was arrested for alleged anti-government activities.
In addition to Warmbier, five other Americans have been tried in the North Korean court system. Sentences have ranged from six to 15 years.
The length of time between trial and release for former detainees ranges from 56 to 556 days.
Matthew Miller was released 56 days after his conviction on espionage charges and sentencing to six years in prison, while Bae was not released until 556 days after his conviction.
American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee served 62 days of their 12-year sentence of hard labor for illegal entry into the country.
Aijalon Gomes served 143 days of his eight-year sentence for illegally entering the country.
Assoc. Politics Prof. Todd Sechser said releases typically involve a visit from a high-level U.S. official or former president.
In 2009, Laura Ling and Euna Lee were released after a delegation led by former U.S. President Bill Clinton traveled to the DPRK to secure their release. Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter visited North Korea in 2010 to aid in the release of Aijalon Gomes.
Most recently, in 2014, U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper visited North Korea to ensure the release of Bae and Miller.
Sechser said the North Koreans use these trips to claim an apology from the American representative, although U.S. officials usually deny the apology.
“Both the visit and alleged apology allow the North Korean government to score political points at home for antagonizing the United States,” Sechser said in an email statement.
* People who are currently being detained
Graphic By: Shreyas Hirway
Conditions
Jeffrey Fowle was arrested May 7, 2014, for leaving a Bible in a nightclub.
At the beginning of his six-month detainment, Fowle was held in the Yanggakdo International Hotel. After a few weeks, he was moved to a guarded guest house for the rest of his detainment.
Fowle said he had limited access to a few different television channels at first — including Chinese and Russian television stations — but was eventually restricted to only DPRK channels.
“I was allowed to watch TV the whole time [at] both places I was detained in,” Fowle said. “I was treated reasonably well at both places. Never physically abused, [and given] three meals a day.”
At the beginning of his detainment, Fowle said he was subject to an investigation by the North Korean government.
“At first there was a lot of writing, formulating the statement of guilt, and that was part of their investigation phase,” Fowle said.
When not in isolation — which lasted 23 hours a day — Fowle said he had access to a translator for 30 to 45 minutes each day and was locked in the guest house.
Fowle was released Oct. 21, 2014, although he said he is unsure why he was released, given that Sony’s controversial film “The Interview” made headlines at that time. The film depicts a fictional American assassination plot of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
Additionally, Fowle’s detainment overlapped with the detainments of Bae and Miller, who had been arrested before Fowle even entered the country.
Fowle said he believes he was held in isolation and did not interact with any domestic North Korean prisoners because North Korean officials ultimately plan to release American detainees.
“They know they’re going to be released eventually, and they want to keep them in isolation so they can completely control the conditions that they’re immersed in and come back and relay this information — they were not beat, they were not starved, they were not treated badly,” Fowle said.
Journalist Euna Lee was arrested March 17, 2009. During her detainment, she said she was also held in isolation.
“Looking back, I was treated fairly during my detainment in the sense that they provided me with a simple Korean meal three times a day, and I was able to see a doctor when I was sick,” Lee said in an email statement. “The difficulty was that I had no access to any information besides what the [North] Korean officers brought to me.”
Lee said the process began with interrogations, followed by a waiting period and charges.
The North Korean Supreme Court found Lee — and fellow journalist Laura Ling — guilty of illegal entry into North Korea and sentenced them to 12 years of hard labor June 4, 2009.
Like Fowle, Lee said foreign detainees are treated differently than domestic prisoners.
“We've heard about the unbelievable stories about the [North Korean] labor camps from [North Korean] defectors about how the prisoners live in a below human level,” Lee said. “Compared to those stories, foreign detainees have definitely been in a fairer conditions.”
However, despite fairer conditions, Lee said she was still a prisoner.
“A prisoner is a prisoner. I was watched by guards 24/7,” Lee said. “Having no visitors and no freedom, no access to the outside news will be hard for anyone who is detained in a country like [North Korea].”
In terms of hard labor, Matthew Miller was sentenced to farm work following his conviction on Sept. 14, 2014.
"Prison life is eight hours of work per day," Miller said, according to an AP report. "Mostly it's been agriculture, like in the dirt, digging around. Other than that, it's isolation, no contact with anyone."
North Koreans have been careful to provide for the physical health of American detainees over recent years, according to David Straub, associate director of the Korea Program at Stanford University’s Asia-Pacific Research Center. Straub, who worked at the State Department for 30 years, was a member of Clinton’s delegation to North Korea in 2009 to secure Lee and Ling’s release. He noted that the North Korean government had detainees checked by doctors.
“They have given them medicine and medical treatment when it’s been required,” Straub said.
Straub said the main issue for American prisoners is the isolation of detainment.
“The problem is that when you’re in a situation like that you don’t have any contact, almost no contact, with the outside world — just the Swedish ambassador or one of his embassy staff people coming to visit whenever the North Koreans allow,” Straub said. “And the only other contact you have is with your North Korean captors.”
Isolation and intimidation of long prison sentences are used to control prisoners, Straub said. Despite the lack of physical harm, the conditions of imprisonment can cause significant psychological stress.
The politics of detainment
State Department Spokesperson Mark Toner condemned Warmbier’s conviction in a press briefing March 16.
“The department believes that the sentence is unduly harsh for the actions Mr. Warmbier allegedly took,” Toner said. “Despite official claims that U.S. citizens arrested in the DPRK are not used for political purposes, it’s increasingly clear from its very public treatment of these cases that the DPRK does exactly that.”
Toner asked for Warmbier’s release on “humanitarian grounds.”
Straub says these visits have become the standard procedure for releasing detainees.
“I have not heard directly or indirectly so far what kinds of demands, if any, the North Koreans have made,” Straub said. “If they do [what has been done in the past], they will eventually let the U.S. government know what person or what rank of person that they insist on coming to grovel to get people back.”’
Although Americans are typically released within a year of being detained, North Korean officials use visits by U.S. officials to “ritually humiliate” the United States on the international stage, Straub said.
“Whenever something is going on — and there always is — in the relationship between the U.S. and North Korea, they like to have a bargaining chip or a distraction to keep up distracted from our strategic aims,” Straub said.
In addition to distracting American officials, Straub said the North Korean government uses the visits by American officials for domestic and foreign propaganda, as well to fulfill the emotional satisfaction of North Korean leaders.
Given the complexity of such a trip, Straub said it takes time to plan the visit of a U.S. official.
“It’s really asking a lot of any state to go and habitually humiliate itself before another, which is what the North Koreans demand,” Straub said. “It usually takes many months before this delicate negotiation can be worked out and the swap arranged.”
Sechser said the basic point of detaining American citizens is to put pressure on the U.S.
“They've been doing it for decades,” Sechser said. “High-level officials and former presidents, including Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, have visited North Korea to negotiate the release of detained Americans. These detentions rarely last more than a few months.”
Straub said the U.S. does not make concessions in these negotiations other than the trips.
North Korea is not the only country that uses detainment tactics. Sechser said Iran has detained Americans over the last several years to meet its objectives.
Graphic by Leo Dominguez.
Nuclear program
International relations may play a role in these detainments.
Since January, North Korea has accelerated its nuclear program and claims to have tested a hydrogen bomb.
The DPRK’s claim of a hydrogen bomb has been questioned by scientists.
Additionally, the United States and United Nations have recently approved sanctions against North Korea in response to its weapons development.
The Washington Post reported March 13 that North Korean state media claimed that its hydrogen bomb could destroy Manhattan.
“If this H-bomb were to be mounted on an intercontinental ballistic missile and fall on Manhattan in New York City, all the people there would be killed immediately and the city would burn down to ashes,” North Korean officials claimed, according to the Post.
Sechser said this claim may or may not be significant, but it presents political consequences for American officials.
“Although this behavior makes it even more politically treacherous for a sitting president to send an official negotiator to North Korea, in the past the U.S. government has used allegedly private visits from former presidents to negotiate the release of detainees,” Sechser said. “That way the U.S. government can disavow the negotiations while still giving North Korea a face-saving way to release the prisoners.”
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