Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Junior]

To be honest you have to respect his courage. He specified that he doesn't want anyone to come and get him out but he wants international governments to bring more focus on the inhuman regime...

U.S. rights activist crosses into North Korea - reports
Reuters, 4 hours 17 mins ago

A U.S. human rights activist trying to raise global attention about the suffering of the North Korean people has crossed into the reclusive state, other activists and South Korean media said on Saturday.

Park was quoted by activists who went with the border as shouting when he went across: "I am an American citizen. I am bringing God's love. God loves you."

The activists asked not to be named due to security concerns.

Park told to Reuters in Seoul earlier this week that he saw it as his duty as a Christian to make the journey and did not want the U.S. government to try to free him.

"I don't want President Obama to come and pay to get me out. But I want the North Korean people to be free," Park said on Wednesday before departing for China.

"Until the concentration camps are liberated, I do not want to come out. If I have to die with them, I will. (For) these innocent men, women and children, as Christians, we need to take the cross for them. The cross means that we sacrifice our lives for the redemption of others," he said.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22/20091226/tts-uk-korea-north-crossing-ca02f96.html

[ReeseDog]

[Ya-ta Boy]

Does anyone have a link to the Darwin Awards? I think I have a nominee.

("said he would carry a message calling for leader Kim Jong-il to step down")

[Manner of Speaking]

Dumb. Ballsy, but dumb.

But on the other hand...maybe North Korea is more fragile than it appears...

it's about time it got its 15 minutes of fame on the world stage for its human rights record. North Korea is a balloon whose skin is getting stretched thinner and thinner...

Ever see some of the reports on this site?

http://goodfriendsusa.blogspot.com/2008/03/north-korea-today-no-116.html

[ED209]

I doubt he'll end up in a gulag. He will, on the other hand, be another mouth to feed. Despite his calls for non-involvement from the US, N.Korea will try to find some way to use him as a bargaining chip. Unlike the two journalists he hasn't tried to evade capture and his crossing was intentional. Though N.Korea can label him a spy if they wish. Maybe they'll chuck him out for being crazy.

[caniff]

A spy using the "Religious Fool Announcing Illegal Entry" cover.

Pure genius.

[Bondrock]

Sounds like an easy guy to brainwash.

Unfortunate that he probably doesn't look foreign enough to be used in any kind of propaganda.

Of course he is in a prison cell. Does anyone really believe he will be treated to a room at the Pyongyang Hotel..?

[On the other hand]

I wonder how this will play over in the US. If this guy is an American evangelical Christian, the Religious Right types, who have been known to relax their hardline stances when one of their own oxen is being gored, might say "Look Obama, you got those two employees of Al Gore out of the North Korean gulag, why not this poor guy who was just going over to spread the gospel?" (I know technically Bill Clinton was acting on his own accord, but that's probably a distinction lost on the type of ideologues we're talking about here, given that his wife is SOS and the two reporters were working for his Vice-president.)

Though I haven't noticed this getting much play in the American press, and if no one over there picks up the ball, the Norks likely won't see much tactical benefit in Park. In that case, I don't see any reason why he wouldn't spend the next few decades of his life in a concentration camp.

[On the other hand]

Some scholars seem to think he'll simply be expelled...