N.Korea: US student cries & admits to being "severe criminal" during press conf.

[Kona]

RE: N.Korea: US student cries & admits to being "severe criminal" during...

I'm going to be following this story...

I'm going to talk to some doctors I know and ask their opinion on what could have caused the massive brain tissue loss in this case. I don't think blunt force trauma does that. His captors may have experimented on him with bacteriological weapons, nerve agents, psychotropic drugs...we just don't know.

This looks like a message. This was a clear message from Pyongyang: don't push us too far. Just like Kim Jong Un sent a message when he murdered his half-brother with sarin. He actually wants the world to know he's capable of atrocities.

And it wouldn't surprise me to see the US try to cover up the details. Why? If the public knew that this kid was out-and-out murdered, they might demand some response. And the sad truth is that, as long as Kim Jong Un and his pathetic country is hiding behind Beijing's skirts, there is little we can really do. Maybe there are more ways we can put the screws to Pyongyang, but it's not easy when the Chinese protect and coddle him. No matter how bad Pyongyang acts, the Chinese are not going to want the regime deposed.

.

When you are talking to the doctors, or whoever, and doing your research, take a look at the video:


Is that even him stealing the poster? Has anyone anywhere done any forensic video analysis and matched heights and body types with my that? I know drone videos can be analyzed to determine how tall people are. May US govt agencies can do it. Hell there probably an iPhone app.

I can't tell a damn thing from that video or who the hell is in it. Did he even steal it to begin with? Did they just drug and beat that corny confession out of him north Korea style?

This makes me angry.

Aloha!

 

[Quintus Curtius]

RE: N.Korea: US student cries & admits to being "severe criminal" during...

Here's a story for you guys.

I was on Cheju-do (Cheju Island) off the coast of South Korea when Kim Il Sung died.
This was in July 1994. I had just gotten off active duty a few months earlier and was a civilian. I was spending a few weeks traveling all over Korea. I had taken a miserable boat from Pusan to Cheju City and was doing some fishing.

Koreans in the countryside, outside of Seoul, are very different from the people in Seoul. They are very hospitable and curious about foreigners; at least it was like that back in the 1990s. Maybe it's different now...I don't know.

Anyway, an old guy I was fishing with (I just met him on the waterfront) invited me to his and his wife's house for something to eat. Country people are like that; there are still a lot of good people in the world. In those days my Korean was decent enough to do basic communication.

At his home, the television was on. The news came on with a report that Kim Il Sung had just died. My host didn't know any English. Nothing at all. This guy was in his 70s or so. The fishing had been good and we were in a good mood.

But he did know two words. He looked at the television, and his face darkened considerably. His eyes narrowed and his mouth hissed as he drew in his breath.

He extended his middle finger and said, "Kim Il Sung...fuck you." These were the only two English words he knew. Then he got up and went into the kitchen. I left soon after this.

.

 

[RIslander]

RE: N.Korea: US student cries & admits to being "severe criminal" during...

I don't get the outpouring of sympathy for this idiot.

^^^ That's because you're a pathetic piece of shit.--

And now Warmbier had passed. RIP.
North Korea has killed an American citizen.

Good. Fuck him. I'm about to bust out my tiny violin. If you don't wanna get imprisoned by a hostile foreign government, don't go to said nation. It's really quite simple. Stay the fuck in Cincinnati.

TJ's spot on. That's a real cunt of a thing for you to say. Can you honestly say you've never done something dumb while young and/or adventurous, with the same 0.1% odds, that could of seriously hurt or killed you?

 

[Tokyo Joe]

RE: N.Korea: US student cries & admits to being "severe criminal" during...

^^^RI: Well said.

Regarding all the keyboard-warrior losers like TM shit-posting about this, Fisto once laid down the righteous truth --

As always I'm shocked at some of the things you faggots say when something horrible happens to another human being.

You motherfuckers try to act so hard "I have no sympathy, guys a dumbass". blah blah blah.

That kid's life is fucking OVER.

Every last one of you have done something much worse, been caught, and nothing happened.

"Oh well he should have respected the rules of the country".

Are you dumbfucks really taking the word of the Korean gov't as the Gospel?

Idiots.

edit - This is you guys' shitty way of virtue signaling

 

[atlant]

RE: N.Korea: US student cries & admits to being "severe criminal" during...

I doubt this kid tried to steal anything. DPRK is famous for detaining people for BS charges. What makes this case any different? Everything that comes out of the North Korean government is a lie.

It's a tough case to judge. The guy doesn't look or seem like he would have done it. At the same time there is zero incentive for North Korea to make it up. What would they have to gain from it except unnecessary diplomatic strain or even military intervention? And if they really wanted to make it up, why him among all the tourists that go to NK? Why come up with such a laughable crime? Why not claim he tried to assassinate someone or tried to gather military intel or something more reasonable that would support their conspiracy theories about the evil West? And if they really wanted to kill him to "send a message" why in such an awkward way that makes them look more incompetent than fearsome?

You can argue that North Korea is just "evil" and that there is no logic to anything they do of course but I don't believe in that. You can't maintain your position as the world's most untouchable supervillain nation for 60 years by being completely clueless.

 

[spokepoker]

It probably started as a lowly Nork trying to get promoted. What better way than to bust someone defacing government property? After that it was off to the races.

 

[Mercenary]

RE: N.Korea: US student cries & admits to being "severe criminal" during...

It's worth noting his roommate on the North Korean trip, an Englishman in his forties, does not believe Warmbier stole anything.

“When we got to Pyongyang, we were the two single guys, so it seemed logical for us to be put in the same room,” Gratton said. “So basically from the time we got to Pyongyang to the time I left him, we were together.”

Warmbier stood out in the group because he was so young, Gratton said. The two bonded that first night over a couple of beers.

“I got to know Otto really, really well,” he said. “He was such a mature lad for his age.”

[...]

Gratton said that in the four days they spent together, Warmbier never said anything about a banner and that he saw zero evidence that Warmbier was planning any such act — quite the opposite. The first Gratton heard of the alleged attempted theft was when it was mentioned in news reports weeks later. Gratton and Warmbier weren’t together 24 hours each day, but they traveled together during the day and hung out each night.

“I’ve got nothing from my experiences with him that would suggest he would do something like that,” he said. “At no stage did I ever think he was anything but a very, very polite kid.”

So:

1. American
2. Single, on a group tour but otherwise traveling alone with no family/spouse, friends, coworkers, etc.
3. Youngest guy in the group
4. Mild-mannered, polite, and compliant

When you're surrounded by a pack of wolves like NK, that's a lot of targets painted on yourself. (The only way it could have been worse was "5. Female").

Another interesting tidbit from Gratton that makes me frown:

Gratton has stayed in contact intermittently with Warmbier’s parents over the past year-and-a-half. He said he was “stunned” nobody from the U.S. government or the tour group ever tried to contact him to ask him if he had any information about what happened.

Baffling, if true. I'm no private eye, but come on, when I think of the first people I'd hit up for answers on what happened...

This story about the roommate (and no one from the US gov questioning him) makes perfect sense if you follow the theory that Otto was actually a spy that got arrested for spying.



...

 

[Vicious]

A 21yo spy from an affluent family sent into THE most repressive and controlled state in the world. A prison state no western country has managed to reliably penetrate for the last 70 years?

 

[Matsufubu]

Wouldn't a 'Western Spy' actually be a South Korean working for the US in order to blend in, rather than a nerdy white student making himself known to the NK authorities?

He didn't bust into the country on a dinghy in the dead of the night James Bond style, he booked the trip through a legit Chinese firm. Therefore he deserves protection and respect from the NK government as a tourist they are happy to have there. If they don't want any white tourists then say 'No'. Allowing him in and then doing God-knows-what to the poor lad until he's effectively dead is extremely provocative. I can only guess that this is a message from the regime to Trump: "Look what we can do, and you can't do anything about it!"

As for the "LOL, dumbass!" comments, I'll just say the same thing I say say every time: this is not 4Chan. If we all suffered the worst possible consequences for our choices when young and invincible there wouldn't even be a forum.

 

[Goldin Boy]

RE: N.Korea: US student cries & admits to being "severe criminal" during...

RIP Otto.

Don't go to a country like North Korea, where the fucking local laws can be changed arbitrarily, and especially keep your hands away from their commie propaganda posters.

Fixed that for you.

We'll never know what he did. Frankly if one's loony enough to book a trip to the DPRK, he may have been loony enough to take an unofficial souvenir?

On the other hand it's a requirement tourist to be escorted by guides everywhere I'm not sure how he would've found time to steal anything.

Fuck man, the poster could've been peeling off the hotel wall, thanks to shitty Soviet-era adhesive tape, and he pressed it back on. They see a young, White, American touching the poster and bam!, it's "stealing" and courts, as a show of Korean might, dole out a punishment that would make Hammurabi blush.

I still don't feel sympathy/pity/remorse for a situation he put himself in(going to NK the first place). He made his bed and he had to lie in it(as a vegetable before he croaked).

 

[ElFlaco]

RE: N.Korea: US student cries & admits to being "severe criminal" during...

A friend of a friend was mowed down by a drunk driver jogging late at night a few years back in Canada. Guess that teaches her for being out late at night? Obviously that's when the majority of drunk drivers will be out. Everyone knows that. Clearly her own fault/no sympathy/guess she learned a harsh but deserved lesson?

I knew someone who was on the sidewalk (with a curb) when a car accidentally jumped the curb and killed her. And someone actually said to me, "well, it's her fault for being on the sidewalk of a busy road." I think some people find it hard to accept that accidents happen. In order to feel secure in their world, they need to tell themselves that everything happens for a reason and that all problems can be avoided. It's a form of denial about the fragility of life and the fact that our circumstances are not totally within our control.

 

[Vicious]

RE: N.Korea: US student cries & admits to being "severe criminal" during...

I'm going to repeat something from the North Korea thread.

I've had my reservations about Trump but if he reacts with the kind of force that is entirely justified in this situation then I'll sing his praises from the top of every building. If he turns Pyongyang into a parking lot I'll myself chisel his likeness out of Mount Rushmore. There is no action, counted in sheer number of human lives saved, that would be greater than toppling the sick North Korean regime. The country is nothing but a prison with 25 million convicts innocently imprisoned at birth.

 

[brick tamland]

It's tragic, so r.i.p. He was a young man about to start his life
Whatever happened, it seems there's more to this. If North Korea was making a point and using this as a showcase, it was absolutely one of the MESSIEST ways to go about it. But then again, maybe that was the point - to have a saga? If so, what does that say about NK? I'm also wondering why NK kept him alive? As it is, Western doctors can't say for sure what led to his condition. Did NK know that there wouldn't be enough warm leads to investigate? Being comatose already, whether he'd died in the USA or he'd died in North Korea, there'd be speculation either way. A few things don't add up here.

 

[Luvianka]

RE: N.Korea: US student cries & admits to being "severe criminal" during...

I'm going to repeat something from the North Korea thread.

I've had my reservations about Trump but if he reacts with the kind of force that is entirely justified in this situation then I'll sing his praises from the top of every building. If he turns Pyongyang into a parking lot I'll myself chisel his likeness out of Mount Rushmore. There is no action, counted in sheer number of human lives saved, that would be greater than toppling the sick North Korean regime. The country is nothing but a prison with 25 million convicts innocently imprisoned at birth.

Unfortunately since the Trump Admin surrendered to the Neocons since the very beginning, right now has no moral grounds to claim and hoard international support to act against North Korea. Even more, this tragedy is to be blamed entirely on the American Government.
Just what exactly is the US strategy about North Korea and what exactly wants to get?
Regime change? Stop dreaming. The only regime change that can operate in NK is that China will allow to happen, since NK is a buffer state for China against the US (and South Korea and Japan) the very moment the US tries a significant diplomatic or military move against NK it will be stopped by China (and Russia if things go really awful).
And I want to stress the fact about the US is in the only interested in a change in NK. Nor Japan neither South Korea have the slighlest interest in engaging in a hot war with the Kim regime.
To use the NK issue combined with the South China Sea issue in a proxy war against China? Well, if such it’s the case, American strategists should do the math carefully, because China holds all the logistics cards in North Korea. and is getting stronger around those sorry ass disputed atollons somewhere in the Pacific. Besides, can someone explain to me what was the action course the US followed to liberate Otto? To send that bi-sexual, travestive, certified clown Dennis Rodman to do the talking with the Dear Leader? What a great job!

 

[Scoundrel]

If Otto Warmbier wanted the North Korea experience, he certainly got it.

On the off-chance that it needs to be said, Otto Warmbier did not steal a political propaganda poster. He likely committed no crime, and did nothing wrong whatsoever. His arrest was arbitrary, his "confession" and "testimony" Communist theater performed at the point of a gun. The fact that the N. Korean government sentenced him to fifteen years of hard labor for what could as best be considered a petty offense ought to clue anyone in as to what's really going on here.

But then, many people are clueless as to the nature of regimes such as North Korea. Yes, they are completely, totally evil. In fact, they are more evil — and more insane — than you, or I, or for that matter even their own people, have the power to fathom.

This incident might help to shine a spotlight on the nature of totalitarian societies, and wake some people up to the reality of what goes on inside them. 1984 was not just a novel; for the people in North Korea and other similar dictatorships, Orwell's nightmare vision is a daily reality.

 

[Engineer]

RE: N.Korea: US student cries & admits to being "severe criminal" during...

I'm going to be following this story...

I'm going to talk to some doctors I know and ask their opinion on what could have caused the massive brain tissue loss in this case. I don't think blunt force trauma does that. His captors may have experimented on him with bacteriological weapons, nerve agents, psychotropic drugs...we just don't know.

This looks like a message. This was a clear message from Pyongyang: don't push us too far. Just like Kim Jong Un sent a message when he murdered his half-brother with sarin. He actually wants the world to know he's capable of atrocities.

snip

.

Ask the doctors if this could come from long term exposure (days/weeks) to low O2 environments in a hypobaric chamber. For obvious reasons I doubt there is any research on this, except perhaps in animals. The idea came to me from remembering the torture scene in the Deadpool movie. Perhaps the norks are expanding and fine-tuning their murderous skills as you suggest. Disgusting.

 

[Mercenary]

RE: N.Korea: US student cries & admits to being "severe criminal" during...

I'm going to be following this story...

I'm going to talk to some doctors I know and ask their opinion on what could have caused the massive brain tissue loss in this case. I don't think blunt force trauma does that. His captors may have experimented on him with bacteriological weapons, nerve agents, psychotropic drugs...we just don't know.

This looks like a message. This was a clear message from Pyongyang: don't push us too far. Just like Kim Jong Un sent a message when he murdered his half-brother with sarin. He actually wants the world to know he's capable of atrocities.

snip

.

Ask the doctors if this could come from long term exposure (days/weeks) to low O2 environments in a hypobaric chamber. For obvious reasons I doubt there is any research on this, except perhaps in animals. The idea came to me from remembering the torture scene in the Deadpool movie. Perhaps the norks are expanding and fine-tuning their murderous skills as you suggest. Disgusting.

That kind of brain damage can also happen if you try to commit suicide by oxygen deprivation (such as by self hanging with bedsheets) and fail.

I'm not saying that's what happened, but the fact that he died before he got to tell his version of the story and official US sources are keeping real quiet makes the whole thing even more suspicious.

We are not getting the whole story of what really happened from either side and probably never will.

 

[Vicious]

RE: N.Korea: US student cries & admits to being "severe criminal" during...

That kind of brain damage can also happen if you try to commit suicide by oxygen deprivation (such as by self hanging with bedsheets) and fail.

I'm not saying that's what happened, but the fact that he died before he got to tell his version of the story and official US sources are keeping real quiet makes the whole thing even more suspicious.

We are not getting the whole story of what really happened from either side and probably never will.

Yeah being in a coma might be an obstacle to that.

 

[churros]

RE: N.Korea: US student cries & admits to being "severe criminal" during...

So what if one of us got abducted by las FARC in Colombia? Or beheaded by ISIS in the Phillipines? Or takes a crack at Venezuela, but never gets to write that data sheet?

Would RVF weep for their own, or get a rage boner for just moral outcomes?

 

[Scoundrel]

Interesting clip of Henry Rollins on Joe Rogan's podcast, talking about his experiences visiting North Korea and Iran: