Otto's Woes

[BoSoxGal]

This piece offers a different perspective on Otto's experience:

I was so lucky to avoid Otto Warmbier’s fate in North Korea
Alex Hoban
I travelled with the same gung ho, alcohol-fuelled tour company that Warmbier did. His death made me realise how naive we were about Pyongyang.

The horrific death of the American student Otto Warmbier after 17 months’ imprisonment in North Korea has put my own years of mischief in the secretive country into sharp focus.

Warmbier, a 22-year-old from the University of Virginia, was arrested in January 2016 and sentenced to 15 years’ hard labour for allegedly attempting to steal a propaganda poster from the hotel he was staying in. He disappeared for more than a year, only to resurface last week when he was flown to the US, suffering an unresponsive coma that led to his death on 19 June.

For those with only an arms-length awareness of North Korea, his tale is as terrifying as it is absurd – but for me, having visited the country on more than one occasion, it has been a fearsome reality check that only adds to my understanding of the absolute tragedy of his fate.

I travelled with YPT – Young Pioneer Tours – which was responsible for Warmbier’s visit, on my first trip to the country in 2009, when its founder, Gareth Johnson, was still hustling for business in the travel forums of the Couchsurfing website. At the age of 23 I drank down the sales pitch of “budget trips to destinations your mother would rather you stayed away from”, and its logic of intrigue, adventure and daring - with no real sense of the risks.

Over the years of its operation Young Pioneer Tours has developed a reputation for gung ho and unruly alcohol-fuelled youths, propagating an unreal idea of North Korea where safety is an afterthought. Its culture trickles down to their guests – Warmbier was reportedly up drinking until 5am on the night of his “crime”, and YPT says it was unaware he had even been separated from the group by Korean officials until they had boarded the plane home. A quick Google of “young pioneer tours drunk” will bring up plenty of anecdotes of this kind of behaviour, usually from disgruntled non-drinkers, reporting on alcohol-induced bad behaviour by guides, travel companions or both.

I can add to the chorus. Johnson was supposed to lead me and a group of friends on the one-week excursion, but I only ever met him once in the end, in a diplomatic hospital in Pyongyang. He had broken his leg after trying to either board or disembark from a moving train heading towards the capital. The wife of one of his colleagues took his place.

The boozy logic of the company and its trips was fuelled by a bizarre, maladaptive nihilism that, much like the panopticon-like nature of North Korea itself, we were all to some degree forced to engage with. This wasn’t always completely bad. There was a lot of leeway with what we felt we could get away with in the supposedly “hermit” kingdom – and in truth most of the time we had a lot of fun feeling like we were flouting the rules and proving the world wrong. Warmbier’s dash along the “secret floor” of the Yanggakdo International Hotel in Pyongyang was a rite of passage for misbehaving twentysomethings looking for thrills, spills and stories to brag about back home. These games were never discouraged by YPT – and several of us had a go. Warmbier’s simple mistake was to unwittingly overstep the ambiguous boundaries by trying to bring back a forbidden trophy.

The shock of Warmbier’s initial arrest and his wretched, seemingly forced, confession of guilt; his disappearance and reappearance in a coma over a year later, followed by his almost immediate death; the rattling confusion of there being no information on how or why any of this happened – all this triggered memories in me of events that could have plausibly escalated in the same deadly way for me.

The time our bus was held up and our belongings were searched because the North Koreans thought someone might have stolen a towel. No big deal, right? The time I agreed to a North Korean girl’s request to take a love letter back to London (to give to someone I knew who had also visited North Korea), warning me not to let it be found at the border. The time that same visitor was held at the border at the end of his next visit, for ripping his photo out of his visa and giving it to her. OK, maybe that was pushing it a bit. But looking back, any of these things could have kickstarted a similar tragedy had it suited our hosts, and I’m gobsmacked by the naivety under which we all laboured.


A year after that first trip, still feeling naively invincible and hungry for more adventure, I separately returned to the north of the country with two friends and ended up getting held hostage for 24 hours, for my friends’ crime of wanting to go to the Chinese consulate to update their visas. Spying an opportunity to mess with us, the North Koreans in charge confiscated our passports and refused us contact with the British embassy as part of a poorly thought-out extortion attempt.

Luckily our handlers were either bad gangsters and not experienced in the art of crime or, being at the isolated tip of the country, were not sufficiently plugged into the state’s Kafkaesque matrix of dependency-led mafiadom to let our situation escalate into who knows what. They quickly gave up harassing us when they ran out of a pretty small set of strategic moves and booted us back into China having taken little more than the €300 in cash we had between us, and my friend’s London Transport Museum wristwatch – a small price to pay for freedom.

Looking back now I feel lucky that the ice never broke beneath my feet. YPT made little substantial comment at the time of Warmbier’s arrest and its tours continued – only now, in response to his death, has the company announced that it will no longer be taking US citizens to the country.

But the rest of us are still invited on to the same party-tastic tightrope that I and Otto Warmbier, and thousands of others, danced on during one of YPT’s “18-30s in the danger zone” excursions in the most isolated nation on earth. Now that there are no illusions about just how bad a fall can be, how many will still be willing to accept this as a one-off tragedy – when one is already too many?

[BoSoxGal]

Comparing conditions in US prisons to those in North Korea is quite a stretch.

Tell that to Sandra Bland's family - or any of the many other American families who have lost children to the US incarceration machine, many of them having never even been convicted of any crime.

If there is one thing I've learned during my time as a criminal lawyer in D.C. and Montana, and my years following the criminal injustice system, it's that the vast majority of Americans have no idea just how brutal our own system truly is.

I'm not going to cry over a stupid kid who voluntarily traveled to a brutal dictatorship and foolishly behaved as though his white middle class privilege would protect him there as it did at home. I'll save my tears for the millions of Americans who live in fear of being stopped by the police for a busted tail light or on suspicion of stealing a backpack because they might end up dead or in solitary confinement for years pre-trial despite living under the protection of the (allegedly) greatest bill of rights known to humankind. That's far more outrageous to me.

[MajGenl.Meade]

MORTALITY RATE AMONG STATE PRISONERS WAS STABLE FROM 2013 TO 2014 BUT INCREASED AMONG FEDERAL PRISONERS AND LOCAL JAIL INMATES

WASHINGTON – In 2014, a total of 3,483 inmates died in state prisons, 444 in federal prisons and 1,053 in local jails, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) announced today. The mortality rate for state prisoners was stable from 2013 to 2014 (273 deaths per 100,000 state prisoners compared to 275 per 100,000). Among federal prisoners, the mortality rate increased from 230 to 262 deaths per 100,000, and the rate for inmates in local jails increased from 136 to 140 deaths per 100,000 jail inmates over the year.

These findings are based on data from BJS's Deaths in Custody Reporting Program (DCRP), which has annually collected counts of inmate deaths in local jails since 2000 and deaths in state and federal prisons since 2001.

In state prisons, illness remained the most common cause of death, accounting for 87 percent of deaths in 2014. Cancer and heart disease accounted for more than half of state prisoner deaths during the year.

From 2013 to 2014, the number of suicides in state prisons increased by 30 percent, from 192 to 249 suicides. Suicides were seven percent of all deaths in state prisons in 2014. Accidental deaths (39) and deaths due to drug or alcohol intoxication (49) each accounted for one percent of state prisoner deaths in 2014.

In 2014, more than a third (425 of 1,053 deaths) of jail inmate deaths occurred within the first seven days of admission. Suicide was the leading cause of death in local jails and accounted for more than a third (35 percent) of all jail inmate deaths. From 2013 to 2014, the number of suicides increased 13 percent, from 328 to 372 deaths.

Heart disease was the second leading cause of death in local jails and made up nearly a quarter (23 percent) of all jail inmate deaths in 2014. Accidental deaths and deaths due to homicide were the least common causes of death in 2014; each accounted for two percent of deaths in local jails.
Other findings include—

In 2014, 80 percent of jails reported zero deaths and 14 percent reported one death.
The majority of state prisoners who died in 2014 were prisoners age 55 or older (59 percent), followed by prisoners ages 45 to 54 (24 percent).
Between 2001 and 2014, the majority of federal prisoners' deaths (88 percent) were attributed to natural causes. During this period, unnatural deaths accounted for less than 10 percent of all federal prisoner deaths, which includes suicides (four percent), homicides (three percent) and accidents (one percent).
Between 2001 and 2014, the mortality rate from cancer, heart disease and liver disease for male state prisoners was twice the rate for females.
Female (three per 100,000) and male (four per 100,000) state prisoners died from drug or alcohol intoxication at nearly equal rates between 2001 and 2014.

The reports, Mortality in Local Jails, 2000-2014 - Statistical Tables (NCJ 250169) and Mortality in State Prisons, 2001-2014 - Statistical Tables (NCJ 250150), were written by BJS statistician Margaret E. Noonan. The reports, related documents and additional information about BJS's statistical publications and programs can be found on the BJS website at http://www.bjs.gov/.

[BoSoxGal]

As our governor declared following the death of Aaron Hernandez, any suicide in the prison system is a failure of that system, period.

So too any murder or sexual assault, I'll assert - and it's also my firm conviction that many deaths of natural causes result from the failure of the prison system to provide adequate and timely medical care. I had a client in Arizona whose short sentence for DUI became a death sentence when he was denied proper care for his rectal cancer; he died not long after his release and the system wasn't held accountable because there was nobody to sue on his behalf.

I'm personally aware of egregious mistreatment of inmates and negligence in standard of care which I cannot discuss in detail due to attorney/client privilege. Suffice to say there is VERY good reason that the ACLU is constantly suing prisons and jails all over the USA.

Some of the people who choose corrections officer as a career are very sick and twisted human beings. I have no doubt whatsoever that some of the 'suicides' and unsolved murders of prison inmates are the result of that chilling reality.

[oldr_n_wsr]

Or maybe they just want to bury him and let him rest in peace without seeing his name and actions bandied about in the press when the results come out? Personally, I respect their decision and hope they cremate him to avoid an exhumation court battle in the future.

I'll go with this explanation.
and say a prayer for him and is family.

[BoSoxGal]

So it seems mommy and daddy are on FOX telling lies about Otto's condition to drum up hostility toward North Korea:

Otto Warmbier's parents say their son was blind, deaf and had mangled teeth when he was brought back to the US after months of torture in North Korea
Fred and Cindy Warmbier said the 22-year-old was jerking and howling on a stretcher when they first saw him when his plane landed in Ohio on June 13
They lashed out at North Korea in their first interview since Otto's death, calling them terrorists for 'intentionally injuring' him

I suppose it's of no consequence that his US doctors said his US scans showed NO signs of previous trauma to his body. How very convenient that his family refused to have him autopsied. Did they cremate him, too? He probably tried to commit suicide and failed, thus the brain damage minus any signs of physical trauma. Or, he really did get botulism - which wouldn't necessarily be detectable in his body after such a long period of time.

This ignorant kid and his whiny parents had better not be one of Trump's excuses to send our military into harm's way.

[Big RR]

He needs and excuse? No president before ever did--they just did what they wanted and made up justification(s) for it.

[BoSoxGal]

Surprise, surprise!

A coroner's report on Otto Warmbier's death appears to conflict with his family's claims that he was tortured by the North Koreans
In a Tuesday interview, Fred Warmbier said 'it looked like someone had taken a pair of pliers and rearranged' his son's teeth
However, the coroner's report says the teeth were 'natural and in good repair' when Otto died six days after being released and returned to the U.S.
The coroner found a collection of 10 scars on Otto's body but none were serious enough to indicate torture

At least half of them were faded, indicating that they were older. The newer scars could have been caused by medical treatment - like one on the side of his neck that could have been the result of an intravenous line.

There was also one at the top of his sternum which looked like a 'tracheotomy scar' caused by inserting a breathing tube.

The coroner listed Otto's cause of death as brain damage from lack of oxygen 'due to an unknown insult more than a year prior to death' - insult meaning injury.

The exact cause of that injury is unknown because the coroner was not allowed to perform a full autopsy by Otto's parents.

When he was returned to the U.S., doctors at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center said he showed no signs of broken bones or other trauma but that he had severe and extensive brain damage. They also said he showed no signs of botulism, though the toxin that causes the illness can't stay in the body for more than a year. He died six days later.

Are the Warmbiers stupid? Or just desperate to stay in the spotlight? Wait, let me guess - a book is coming out soon?

Or maybe they just can't accept responsibility for letting their son go to North Korea in the first place. (Yes, I know he was over 18 - but I'm guessing they footed the bill just the same.)

Anyway, they're liars.

[rubato]

Intelligence, and the lack of, breeds true. Just look at Donny and Eric Trump.

[BoSoxGal]

Here’s a good piece about Otto’s North Korea experience; the author posits that he might have attempted suicide after being sentenced to 15 years imprisonment, as I’d also suspected might be the case.

https://www.gq.com/story/otto-warmbier- ... true-story