You’re looking at the Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang.
It’s North Korea’s tallest building, standing 105 stories.
Construction began on the hotel in 1987, and had it been completed according to schedule,
it would have opened in 1989.
It’s been nicknamed “Hotel Doom” and I think you can see why.
But the original idea was pretty cool, I guess.
It would have been the world’s tallest hotel and included 3,000 rooms for guests, for restaurants,
for rotating restaurants, for rotating residences...bells and whistles.
But at this point you might be wondering why I keep using these theoretical phrases, it
‘would have been’, it ‘could have been’.
There were some delays.
Construction began in 1987, but by 1989 only the frame was done.
After the Soviet Union collapsed, foreign investment dried up for North Korea, and construction
stopped in 1992.
In 2008, they tried again, and in three years the facade was done.
They wanted to open the main hotel in 2013, but that was called off.
They reduced the number of guest rooms from 3,000 to 150.
Still, nothing.
To this day the Ryugyong Hotel remains unfinished- perhaps based on a nice idea, but ultimately
a 105 story, mysterious, authoritarian-looking, empty construction.
Like the rest of North Korea, a source of endless open questions and peculiarities for
people you and me.
6 kilometers, or 3.7 miles away lies an actual operating hotel, the Yanggakdo International.
This one actually has guests, rooms, even a nameless North Korean Draft Beer you can
order.
A night here runs about $350 US Dollars.
And it was in this hotel that this grainy footage was purportedly taken.
A shadowy figure approaches, takes something off the wall, and sets it down.
If you were to get in the Yanggakdo Hotel elevator you have access to 47 floors.
Well- 46- you can see in this picture the count goes 1,2,3,4,6- the fifth floor being
staff-only and despite having a couple videos snuck out showing dark hallways with propaganda
posters, we don’t know the purpose of any of it.
Supposedly, that’s what is being taken from the wall is this video: a North Korean propaganda
poster from the fifth floor of the Yanggakdo Hotel.
The authorities claim that the shadowy figure is Otto Warmbier, a visiting American Student
from Ohio.
He was there with the help of Young Pioneer Tours, a chinese company which organizes travel
to places ‘your mother would rather you stayed away from’.
Though we’re not sure ‘how’, or ‘why’, or even ‘if’ Warmbier did what they accused
him of doing, the story goes like this: during his winter visit to North Korea in late 2015,
Otto Warmbier stayed in the Yanggakdo Hotel in Pyongyang.
While staying there, he made his way to the staff-only 5th floor, took down a propaganda
poster which read, “Let’s arm ourselves strongly with Kim Jong-il’s patriotism”.
He was arrested on January 2nd, 2016 at the Pyongyang Airport as he tried to leave the
country.
The evidence of this crime: the grainy, shadowy video.
And something more sinister to go along with it.
I’m going to show you footage from Warmbier’s press conference 2 months after his arrest
in North Korea in which he addresses accusations that he’s ‘Committed Hostile Acts Against
the State’.
Now we can doubt the legitimacy of this statement on a number of grounds.
The first being that many foreign detainees before Warmbier have recounted their statements
once released from North Korea.
Second, it’s apparent to me that the statement was written by a non-native speaker of English
and given to Warmbier to memorize.
I say that because there’s no contractions in the entire statement, ‘wouldn’t’
becomes ‘would not’,‘can’t’ is always ‘cannot’, and the phrasing and vocabulary
are just weird.
Take a listen.
Add on to the odd phrasing the ludicrous circumstances Otto describes as his motivations.
Namely, that the mother of of a friend of his from Ohio wanted him to ‘damage the
spirit of Korean workers’ by stealing a sign with a slogan on it and bringing it back
to Ohio so they could hang it up in the Methodist church as an anti-communist trophy.
It was a leap year and Warmbier’s trial was February 29th, 2016 before North Korea’s
Supreme Court.That is the topic I want to go a little bit deeper with: North Korea’s
peculiar Judicial System.
It was the DPRK’s Supreme Court which tried Warmbier, and that’s because it is the court
of first instance in situations with criminal acts against the nation, particularly when
foreigners are involved.
And their decisions are final.
There is no appeal process as the Supreme Court, at certain times called the Central
Court, is the highest court of appeals.
Below it are 12 provincial courts, usually paneled by three judges, which have initial
jurisdiction for grievous crimes, and which otherwise serve as the final court of appeal
for the 100 People’s Courts which come below.
They’re called People’s Court because they usually are presided over by a single
judge with two civilian assessors to oversee the decisionmaking.
They’re organized at the County level and have jurisdiction over everyday civil disputes
and criminal justice (NYU Law).
The North Korean state was founded on Marxist-Leninist ideology with heavy influence from Stalin’s
Russia and Mao’s China.
And as such, a Marxist might see a western justice system as a repression from the bourgeoisie
upon the working proletariat.
The North Korean solution to this was to use law as a hammer to nail state policy into
society (Goedde, 2008).
The People’s assessors, laymen oversight in a court of law, is a staple of Communist
Justice Systems.
Along the same line, judges are able not only to give punishment to the convicted, but to
subject them to ‘reeducation’ programs highlighting the value of the worker’s party
and the dictatorship of the proletariat (Goedde, 2008).
Overshadowing these outside influences is North Korea’s first Supreme Leader Kim Il-Sung’s
personal ideology called ‘Juche’.
Loosely translated as ‘self-reliance’, ‘Juche’ mixes Nationalism into Communist
ideology in order to focus on three things: National independence, economic self-sustenance,
and national defense.
Shortly put, this is how the regime aimed to justify their cult of personality that’s
lasted into the present era: follow me so we can achieve communism in our own Korean
way.
Juche was first incorporated into the North Korean Constitution in 1972.
In her work, Law “Of Our Own Style”, Dr. Patricia Goedde describes 5 consequences Juche
had for the North Korean Judicial System “First, the law reflects the wishes and
interests of the working people (the dominant class).
Second, the law is a State instrument.
Third, citizens and all organizations have the duty to obey the law (as opposed to having
legal rights against the State).
Fourth, socialist law shall be perfected (eschewing bourgeois law), and, lastly, socialist law-abiding
life shall be promoted (making the observance of law a moral obligation).”
In this system, national sovereignty is paramount and the laws are a tool to that effect.
Both laws and rights emanate directly from the state, and by not leading a ‘socialist
law-abiding life’, you forfeit your rights.
Because the laws exist to protect the state and not the rights of citizens, the Judiciary
is not independent.
The Supreme Court of North Korea doesn’t exercise judicial review over the new laws,
it doesn’t provide precedents for constitutionality of executive actions- rather than acting as
a check, it merely serves as an additional rubber stamp for the regime.
The entire court system is accountable to the Supreme People’s Assembly, the legislature
of North Korea.
When the Supreme People’s Assembly is in recess (most of the time), the courts are
accountable to the much smaller Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly.
Now stay with me, all candidates to the Supreme People’s Assemblies are pre approved by
the Korean Worker’s Party, which is controlled by the Chairman of the party- who is, you
guessed it, Kim Jong-un, Supreme Leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
Supreme Leader controls the Worker’s Party, controls the Assembly, controls the courts.
Everything from the smallest theft to an Internationally watched show trial of a foreigner is under
direct supervision.
This likely explains the speculation that Otto Warmbier’s arrest was a response to
international sanctions against North Korea.
By arresting an American citizen, they gained just the smallest bit of leverage in a geopolitical
game stacked heavily against them.
Hence, the showmanship and the scripted apology:
Now under the auspices of a Supreme Court Justice and by extension, the entire North
Korean power structure, the only thing left for Otto Warmbier was sentencing.
Even with the United States Administration demanding, “...the North Korean government
to pardon [Warmbier] and grant him special amnesty and immediate release,", he was sentenced
to 15 years of hard labor.
But ‘where?’.
I’m going to use some subjective terminology with you in the rest of the video, but I think
it’s justified justified: North Korean prison camps are horrible places full of starvation,
inhumane conditions, torture, public executions, sexual assault, and forced abortions.
According to eye-witness testimony from defectors and satellite imagery, it is estimated that
there are between 150,000 and 200,000 political prisoners in North Korea spread across 6 political
prison camps, though this information is always in flux due to the secrecy of the regime.
Another series of 15-20 reeducation camps are run by by the Ministry of People’s Security.
A report by the National Commission of Human Rights of Korea states that, “[Political
Prison Camps] can be generalized into two types.
The first is the ‘maximum security camp’ or ‘total control zone,’ in which prisoners
are detained for life.
The second category, the ‘high-security camp,’ or ‘revolutionary zone,’ consists
of detention areas from which prisoners are released after having served a set prison
term.”
In addition, generational imprisonment, though less common today than in the past, is still
practiced:“The government practices collective punishment, sending to forced labor camps
not only the offender but also their parents, spouse, children, and even grandchildren.”
(2012 Human Rights Report).
Amnesty International became aware of a case in which a child was contained for 243 days
inside what they called, “a tiny ‘torture cell”’ where it is impossible to stand
or lie down.”
Another common torture is so-called, ‘Pigeon torture’ in which a detainee is suspended
with their arms behind their center and are then hit repeatedly.
Every escapee with whom Amnesty International spoke “witnessed at least one public execution”.
In 2002, the New York Times reported interviews with 35 escapees, “31 said they had witnessed
babies killed by abandonment or being smothered with plastic sheets.
Two defectors later described burying dead babies, and two said they were mothers who
saw their newborns put to death,”
A 2014 UN Human Rights Council report stated, “hundreds of thousands of political prisoners
have perished in these camps over the past five decades.
The unspeakable atrocities that are being committed against inmates of the kwanliso
political prison camps resemble the horrors of camps that totalitarian States established
during the twentieth century.”
Add to all this the weak North Korean Judiciary we discussed earlier.
According to the US State Department Human Rights Report, “Members of the security
forces arrested and reportedly transported citizens suspected of committing political
crimes to prison camps without trial.
The UN Human Rights Report backs this up: “Persons who are found to have engaged in
major political crimes are “disappeared”, without trial or judicial order, to political
prison camps,”
In addition, forced confessions are the norm.
Preliminary investigations are often full of torture; false statements of guilt are
coerced to stop the violence.
And the kind of crimes for which you can thrown into a political prison camp are very broad.
As The Committee for Human Rights in Korea put it, “...presumed political, ideological,
and sociological deviants deported to and imprisoned in the labor camps include persons
suspected of wrong-doing... being on the “wrong” or losing side of a bureaucratic, factional,
or political dispute within the Korean Workers’ Party...wrong-thinking includes expressing
or supporting ideas at variance with the official ideology...wrong-association is being part
of a family...whose patriarch was part of a purged faction of the Korean Worker’s
Party….wrong-class,” having anything to do with private property or land-owning.
As you might imagine, a system like this also leads to the imprisonment of many ‘unwanteds’
from society.
Consider then, know what we know about the conditions of the camps from a variety of
sources- consider being sent there guilty of no real crime.
What became of Otto Warmbier?
As of the making of this video it remains unclear.
He does have an advantage over native North Korean prisoners.
There’s no incentive for the government to keep its native prisoners alive, and it’s
estimated 40% of inmates die from malnutrition (Amnesty International).
But as an American detainee, he’s a more valuable bargaining chip for the North Korean
government if he’s kept in relatively good health.
This is evidenced by other American detainees released early after being given heavy and
long labor sentences; most after around 150 days.
There could be a similar case for Otto Warmbier.
But there’s no guarantee.
A south Korean-American Kenneth Bae was held 735 days and was sent to a labor camp during
that time.
Robert Park, a christian minister was arrested in 2010 and was tortured in 3 different labor
camps before being released 43 days later.
And if you’re keeping track, Otto Warmbier was arrested January 2nd, 2016, which means
he’s already way beyond the average imprisonment for American detainees.
It’s absolutely possible he’s been sent to a labor camp, though if Kenneth Bae is
any precedent, he’s alone, guarded by a team and escorted daily for work,
as Bae was briefly allowed to explain to CNN in an interview he gave during his time in
guard, and there’s one doctor,” We can’t know if Warmbier is receiving similar
treatment.
Since his trial, Otto’s family has received only one letter from him.
“On April 23 Ri Su Yong, North Korea's foreign minister, defended jailing Mr Warmbier but
suggested that, as with past detainees, he may not serve his full sentence.”
(The Telegraph).
And let me pause just for a second to clear something up with you.
I use Warmbier as a way of bringing you into this story, but don’t think that this is
an attempt to micro focus on American victims.
All of the thousands of Koreans- real people- living through excruciating conditions right
now in the North Korean detention camps deserve a fair justice system.
While western leaders stress over Pyongyang's nuclear program, while South Korea low balls
the cost of reunification, while China embarrasses itself by handing political refugees back
to the North Korean authority knowing full well they’ll end up in these detention centers-
while all that’s going on, human crisis occurs everyday behind the barbed wire of
North Korea’s death camps every single day, and we shouldn’t forget it.
I think, however, it’s important to just take a step back from the geopolitical pressures-
to acknowledge the hundreds of thousands of Korean victims of the broken judicial system,
and to recognize that it, like the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is ultimately
a doomed, mysterious, authoritarian, and empty construction.