Detained and interrogated for 10 hours in North Korea | Hacker News Reader

Detained and interrogated for 10 hours in North Korea

bbc.com

125 pointsleothekim97 comments

While no doubt terrifying, the actual procedures and interrogation methods here are little different than in western nations. US agents are free to grab people as the leave the country. And 10 hours is nothing. A US court won't think anything of a detention lasting less than 24 hours. Even the questioning seems to follow standard law enforcement procedure, with teams of age-diverse interrogators being rotated in and out periodically. So while I have great respect for Rupert Wingfield-Hayes and will continue to do so, he should talk to those who have been detained at other airports on similar accusations.

North Korea surely has a more dramatic penal system, a deadly one. But as this reporter feared the labour camp, those at US airports faced with FBI agents accusing them of terrorism see Gitmo and the black sites.

Huh? Are you not aware that the US has capital punishment as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_the_Unit...? Or did you mean that the NK one is "more" deadly?

The chances of death on any given day in US detention are small in comparison to detention in North Korea. A person would probably last longer on US death row (10+ years) than in a NK labor camp. So despite the US love of the death penalty, it;s the far less deadly.

While that may be the case for citizens of the DPRK the story it is certainly not true for Americans who visit. They are charged and arrested for their crimes, sentenced to a decade or more in prison, and then released and deported within a year or two. It's a story that we've seen play out many times: Kenneth Bae, Matthew Todd Miller, Laura Ling, Euna Lee, Merrill Newman, etc. Nothing new nor interesting, must be a slow news day.

American prisoners are teated like a royalty and not sent to prison camps with NK citizens.

You can read more about this in Kenneth Bae's book 'Not Forgotten: The True Story of My Imprisonment in North Korea' that he earlier this month.

Use the Principle of Charity next time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity

I don't like replying to myself, but was this guy even handcuffed? US agents normally cuff/tie suspects to chairs/tables and the like, especially during transport. That's a very scary thing for the average person. NK seems to have allowed him slightly more dignity than the average US airport detention.

We can tell that he was not handcuffed because the article lacks a paragraph or two describing how a brutish guard (also named Kim) forced cold shackles tightly around his wrists.

It is not in fact normal in Western nations to be detained at the border and threatened with a month's additional detention for writing that the nation's people have the voices of dogs or ugly faces. Be careful about false equivalence. Every Western nation does, or has recently done, many bad things. Perhaps the US has done more bad things than most. But none of them are comparable to North Korea.

This rhetorical point-scoring is so old it has several names; "tu quoque" is a formal one, but the more evocative of them is "And you are lynching Negroes".

Really. Talk to someone who has gone through a terrorism-related interrogation. Interrogators do not have to tell the truth. They do threaten to lock you up for life. They do threaten to involve your family. The fact that those threats lack legal teeth doesn't matter for the hours you are in that room being threatened. Often they know nothing about why you were detained and are tasked simply with squeezing out your entire life history. So questions often appear random and illogical. It's a very scary experience.

(Talk to Muslim travellers first detained at US airports, not soldiers who think a security clearance interview qualifies as interrogation.)

No one claimed that it is normal to be detained for insults in Western nations, you're the only one arguing that point. Parent comment specifically mentioned terrorism accusations in the context of treatment that Hayes experienced and the fears he envisioned. Had they said that all travelers to the US have fears of being held on terrorism charges then you would have a point, but they didn't. It was limited to how people already accused of terrorism are treated [0] and what fears they have, not travelers in general.

>Perhaps the US has done more bad things than most. But none of them are comparable to North Korea.

Playing that game won't be productive.

[0] https://varnull.adityamukerjee.net/2013/08/22/dont-fly-durin...

Sorry Thomas, but the reason I have never revisited the US is because during a flight from London to Auckland our plane had a refuel stop in LA.

Technically we hadn't entered the USA but somehow it was acceptable for the TSA or border agents to treat us as potential terrorist suspects. We were marched around the holding area like cattle and suspects to have our fingerprints and retinas scanned. It was truly awful experience. I certainly won't ever be visiting your country again.

Sincerely, people should just stop going there. Historically it is extremely difficult for a real regimen change towards democracy to be forced from the outside. And by going there we are only giving them credit, since they show what they choose to show that does not correspond to the reality of the country.

Just close the contact, close the product transactions, let them (the party) to rot for a while. The people will suffer a bit more for a time, but it could be the trigger to have the people finally rebel against the regimen.

Tourists also give them money. It's an extremely poor country with few sources of foreign currency. Tourism is a good chunk of that, and the proceeds likely go towards building more missiles and nuclear warheads, not anything good.

>Tourism is a good chunk of that, and the proceeds likely go towards building more missiles and nuclear warheads, not anything good.

Most tourists are from friendly regimes like china, south asian countries. These people don't get detained because they have the common sense to no break their laws.

There is no way 1500 western tourists are funding their nuclear arms .

Sure, what I said applies to all tourists.

The vast majority of American visitors aren't getting detained either, of course. Just observe how it makes the news when they do; if it happened all the time it wouldn't be newsworthy.

> Sincerely, people should just stop going there.

You should watch the TV series 'locked up abroad' all kinds of people get locked up in all kinds of countries.

People who got locked up in North Korea were breaking their laws and the country is within their right to punish them.

Kenneth Bae - evangelism Lings - Illegal entry/crossing/, Illegal filming. ....

Don't go to a foreign country and break their laws.

> Sincerely, people should just stop going there.

Because that worked so well in Cuba.

Americans might have stopped going but there has been 3 millions of non-Americans tourists in Cuba every year.

It's the same situation in Korea, just a different mechanism. The refugee crisis that would result from a DPRK collapse would land on China's doorstep, so the Chinese will do whatever it takes to prevent that from happening. U.S. tourists (or any tourists for that matter) not going to the DPRK won't change that.

What might change the situation is people in the DPRK meeting U.S. tourists and seeing with their own eyes that we are not the monsters we have been made out to be. Big societal changes can grow from small seeds of doubt.

Unfortunately, you can't actually meet DPRK citizens on a tour to the DPRK. The only way you can visit is by going on a DPRK government-sponsored tour where you are herded between 'culturally important' landmarks by government approved tour guides. The DPRK is leaps and bounds ahead of you on controlling this sort of 'cultural creep.' Also, they appreciate the significant donation to their government for the short tour.

> you can't actually meet DPRK citizens on a tour to the DPRK.

Of course you can. Your government minders are DPRK citizens.

> The DPRK is leaps and bounds ahead of you on controlling this sort of 'cultural creep.'

Of course they are. But a tourism embargo is not going to change that.

Look, it's possible that the DPRK really is an evolutionarily stable strategy, and they might be able to maintain their totalitarian regime forever. But if there's a way to crack it, the most likely mechanism is through instilling doubt into individual North Koreans that everything that they are being told is true. The best way to do that is to show them evidence that some of the things that they are being told is not true, and you can't do that if you're not there. You might not be able to do it even if you are there, but at least if you're there, there is a possibility.

It isn't so much that people shouldn't go there, but perhaps that the people who are going there shouldn't. A BBC crew isn't a tour group. They are reporters with an agenda. That agenda may only be to tell the truth, but truth telling in NK is a big deal. And every time I hear about a westerner being detained, I feel obligated to dig into things to see whether they were in fact a religious zealot actually seeking to do exactly that with which they are accused. Admittedly that isn't the BBC, but westerners working for "charities" in places like Afghanistan or NK often turn out to be secretive missionaries trying to proselytize their faith.

I, as anybody here have no sympathy for any oppressive regimes, and NK one is extreme out of extremes.

that said, journalist detained is an idiot. either completely incompetent and uninformed on what it actually means visiting such a regime (hard to believe), or just plain old ignorant bloated ego "I am above". from his own words on description of situation, I am not surprised he was detained, rather that he got out so easily from such a place.

Agreed. Like someone else said in the comments, this person is simply an attention seeker. It almost seems like he went to NK, didn't find any newsworthy stories and had to invent one to justify the trip. Not very good journalism.

Surely this is sarcasm

I think you might need to do a bit more research on Rupert Wingfield-Hayes... he's neither an idiot, nor an attention seeker - indeed from the reports I've seen him do from various undesirable places on BBC News over the years, it appears he's a very competent journalist and not one who's afraid to be in a dangerous place to get a story out.

Did you actually read the comments that the DPRK officials made about his statements? Typical frame-up things, intentionally taking offence where none in particular was meant. There are plenty of things that RW-H could have said since being released which he appears not to have done.

The naivety of some of the comments on this thread is baffling to me. North Korea isn't a problem which is just going to go away. It's far more stable than the Syrian civil war, and that's been going on for years. NK could continue indefinitely by doing what it's doing.

if you write a rather insulting article about half of the countries in this world (probably most/all muslim ones, and all non-democratic ones), you can expect they might hit back when you visit again. surprise surprise - they did, and in rather standard (and non-violent) way for these regimes.

it's a ridiculous place, nobody argues about that. most folks have common sense and don't poke a lion in the eye with the stick in his own territory. would you? probably not. then why should I have any sympathy for this guy? he did exactly that, and his surprise when they detained him just shows what I've written - ignorance.

would you go to Iran and write before an article in BBC saying how their officers are idiots barking around? (i loved visiting that place, but common sense is needed, and this guy didn't show much).

This is just attention seeking, not a real article. I have never worked as a journalist but even I know: When you are in North Korea, you don't write articles about North Korea. And if you have written western style articles about North Korea in the past you don't ever go there. Everything else can only be considered on purpose. There is no harm done here. I'm surprised that with his attitude they only kept him for 10 hours.

> I have never worked as a journalist but even I know

Curious, and how would you "know"?

It can be as simple as reading the WikiTravel article about the country. Doing the slightest amount of cursory research beforehand will clue you in. The journalist has been there before, so it is safe to assume he is in the know. It seems like resisting the urge to write the most trite garbage imaginable was too much for him. The articles he wrote have been written countless times before, so what was the value in his visit?

Mostly life experience, I would say. Through experience one knows that managing opinions of other people is part of keeping one's position in society (e.g. being the big boss). One also experiences that these opinions others hold are based on the messages (or news) they receive. Therefore controlling the press is important to maintain power. Therefore nothing is more pain in the ass to a government than the reporters of differently typed governments. Especially reporterts from directly declared enemies and from governments that are much better at controlling the news than oneself. Think about the guy in the office who exploits people all the time but for some reason the majority always seems to like him. Now think about him badmouthing you in front of you and others. Wouldn't you feel forced to react somehow?

Issue is he thought that because he was a reporter that he was not at risk, which was foolish.

Anyone entering North Korea should realize that there is the very real chance that they may be held against their will, be killed, etc.

Knowing this, only then should someone decide if it makes sense to visit.

The point of the detainment was to get "an apology" for the published articles for the purpose of making an example of the journalist for other news agencies and also for internal audiences who may have read the articles.

These articles (and the "follow-up" detainment article) provided a valuable glimpse into a closed society. I am confident Mr Wingfield-Hayes is a responsible adult who can make his own decisions about risk.

Yeah it's the opposite right? As a reporter I would be _more_ scared to go to such a country, not less.

I was detained and interrogated for 12 hours in Congo, accused of being a spy for the CIA. The whole thing was very scary.

C'mon man, you can't just dangle that in front of us and then not tell the story.

I was on a flight to Goma which had in years past experienced some dangerous rebel activity. I studied the region intensely before going there and understood that the situation was currently safe, but sitting next to a local on the plane decided to ask him. He didn't understand my pronunciation of the rebel leader and group names (for example, Ntaganda) so I wrote them in my notebook, upon seeing them in writing he immediately understood and assured me they were not active.

Later in the conversation we were discussing Hawaii, which he didn't know by name. I drew a small map of it in my notebook to see if he understood by the look of the islands since they're pretty distinctive.

After landing I'm checking in and the customs guy asks for some baloney authorization papers that no one at the embassy or capital ever mentioned. When I said I didn't have them he said, "Give me $200." I said no, he said it again. I explained I was on a strict budget and even if I did have the money I wouldn't give it to him. He told his goons to search all my bags.

One of his guys opens my notebook full of the names of all the rebel generals and groups in Congo accompanied by map sketches. Mind you these people have no concept of Wikipedia. I was transferred around after being detained. The first question was, "What is your relationship with General Nkunda?" (an infamous war criminal). Of course the more innocent I made myself appear, the more honed my spycraft appeared to be.

After the initial interrogation I was forced into the back of an SUV with giant people on both sides of me and they refused to say where we were going. I was sure I was going to be shot and put in a ditch or a prison. After asking 100x they said we were going to the airport. We came to a fork in the road, the airport was right, they turned left. That was one of the scariest moments in my life.

Fortunately we were going to the airport, but to my hotel first to get my things, I was deported back to the capital for a second round of interrogation. After that I got a professional translator who was probably one of a dozen people who spoke English well enough in the country to understand what happened. The Minister of the Interior apologized and offered to give me armed escorts to off-limit areas in apology, which I refused and can only imagine was another attempt to see if I was a spy.

TL;DR I'm owed a favor by Democratic Republic of Congo's Minister of the Interior. And now I remember the whole incident was 20 hours, not 12.

I was detained together with 4 friends and interrogated in the border between Poland and Ukraine for about 2-3h just because we fill out the visa papers wrongly (they didn't agree in our stated reason for entering the country).

It was actually rater amusing since I never thought nothing really bad could happen. But it shows how dangerously arbitrarily are the people taking decisions in countries where there is no real accountability for the government and its public servants and enforcement agencies.

I travel to a lot to countries which require visas to be gotten upfront and I learnt to not fill them in myself. I use a service per country for getting the visas and never had issues since. I spent many hours at the PL/UA (going to Lviv) border before that...

Czech game developers face 20 years of prison in Greece... They took photos of public buildings

They were released over 3 years ago, after over 100 days in jail... They were arrested for photographing a military base, wich is not exactly a public building (and illegal in every country I know of).

Case was resumed (it was never closed) a few weeks ago. If they are sentenced in Greece, our country will have to pass them to Greece.

Uhh, I havent heard of that... I thought the thing was over in 2013!? It would be an utter embarresment for greece if they really pushed this any further.

>wich is not exactly a public building (and illegal in every country I know of).

Which is still all kinds of fucked up. If you don't want your government facility to be photographed build it underground.

Yes, it is kind of fucked up. I dont want to excuse silly laws like that, but I think it is more reasonable to expect things like this if you take photos of military installations (at least more reasonable than beeing detained because you said 'someone barked at me').

And up until now I thought the case was closed, because there was no intention of espionage, but appereantly I was wrong (see: jkot in the sister-thread).

> If you don't want your government facility to be photographed build it underground.

You comment gave me a thought: What about the people that operate Google Earth? They must be held accountable for espionage in every counry in the world. Now 'that' is fucked up...

It is legal to photograph a military base (or any other government property, for that matter) in the US, provided that you do it from the public right-of-way (or any other place you would otherwise have a right to be). Unfortunately, MPs, sheriff's deputies, and municipal police officers (if applicable) are very likely to hassle you about it anyway, and possibly also detain you on any convenient pretext, should you attempt it.

This had bred a variety of protester that will stand on the public sidewalk, photographing things, until a cop shows up. The police encounter is recorded in its entirety. Depending on what the cop does, the protester may then sue for rights violations, and typically receives a settlement offer after the judge sees the video, which then gets posted to the Internet to fan your outrage.

I may have misread your tone, but you sound as if you find such protesters distasteful. I for one hope they bravely continue, until such time as one need not fear being detained on convenient pretexts for legal activities.

Yes, you definitely misread. The only thing I find distasteful about such protests is that those cops who enforce laws that do not exist are not generally held personally accountable for their actions in any meaningful way, even when they cost their county/municipality tens of thousands of dollars for just a few minutes worth of unprofessional conduct.

What? Seriously?

Yep true story.

Lesson: Don't go to North Korea.

I saw here on HN the other day a guy in the USA who's detained for 7 moths without charge. Lesson: Don't go to, or stay in, the USA.

Are you not allowed, as a visitor to the USA to go and report about any place inside the USA were any other citizen of the USA is allowed to go and to report about?

I don't know. You tell me, as you seem to be so well informed and ready to jump in the defense of the USA. Are you not allowed, as a visitor to NK to go and report about any place inside NK were any other citizen of NK is allowed to go and to report about?

No, you are not, as evidenced by the presence of escorts throughout your stay and the search of all of your digital media upon entry and exit of the country.

Is that evidence that NK journalists don't get the same treatment as foreign journalists? How so?

Snowdon sure seems to have problems following his reporting about the USA.

Do you have a link? Our Constitution is interpreted by the courts as allowing 72 hours to charge or release.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/04/child-porn-suspec...

"The suspect, a former Philadelphia Police Department sergeant, has not been charged with any child porn crimes. Instead, he remains indefinitely imprisoned in Philadelphia's Federal Detention Center for refusing to unlock two drives encrypted with Apple's FileVault software in a case that once again highlights the extent to which the authorities are going to crack encrypted devices. The man is to remain jailed "until such time that he fully complies" with the decryption order."

Not sure on this specific case, and IANAL, but from reading the article it sounds as if he has been found in contempt of court. When a judge rules an individual in contempt they can sentence them to an unspecified amount of time as to make them comply. In this case, although he hasn't been charged with the "headline grabbing" crime, he is charged with contempt which has no minimum/maximum sentence and is completely up to the judge's discretion.

Believe it or not, people can be sent to jail for crimes other than child porn. For example, contempt of court is a crime punishable by imprisonment...

He's not detained without charge. He's detained on the charge of contempt of court.

He's choosing to stay in a jail full of transient prisoners to avoid being a former police officer in prison for crimes against children.

Your constitution went trough the window the moment you started having secret courts. That is stuff from fascists, secret courts.

Reading articles on HN has long ago cemented my decision to not go to USA.

Smart man.

That's a shame, there are many wonderful people here, just as in the DPRK and all over the world.

He was charged with contempt of court if that is the case I recall.

Ah, the classic false equivalence argument.

You can expect at least one in any thread criticizing any country that isn't the USA!

In this case, the Whataboutism has a mild kimchi flavor.

to quote George Carlin: "[...]stay the fuck in Oklahoma. They're not cutting people's heads off in Oklahoma."

It's the same in Japan: it is considered normal to hold people 23 days without charge.

Sounds like the US for the wrong nationality/demographic, to me...

WTF does the BBC endanger their reporters by publishing anything while they are in such an incredibly dangerous country?

Pure Gonzo journalism

I would like to point out the figurative middle finger the BBC is giving to NK. The offensive material that they pointed to are still published on the BBC website, even though the apology stated that they'd be taken down.

I'm curious if the decision to detain him came from the very top. Additionally if it was actually because of the nuclear bomb question he asked the student in the video.

10 hours of questioning? What an authoritarian monstrosity of a state. Civilized countries limit their overreaching interrogations-cum-intimidations of journalists to 9 hours.[0]

How brave of the BBC to report dispassionately on this alien, backwards nation.[1]

[0]: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-23782782

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pnt_uT5YzQ

> I was told that my reporting had insulted the Korean people, and that I needed to admit my mistakes. They produced copies of three articles that had been published on the BBC website, as I reported on the visit of the Nobel laureates.

Hate speech is punishable even in UK.

Yes, but using "bark" as a synonym for "shout" doesn't count as hate speech.

It has negative connotation. People were charged (and jailed) for less.

Plus he wrote a bit more.

It has a negative connotation so it is hate speech? I think not. [edited: used to read hate crime, wasn't paying attention]

You're the first one to bring up hate crimes here.

Edit: downvotes? Maybe you should look up UK hate speech laws before deciding that violating them constitutes as hate crime.

You're responding in a thread that started by someone claiming this was hate speech, and your response to one of the child posters is that "You're the first one to bring up hate crimes here". I imagine this is the reason for the completely warranted downvotes. Context matters, and you're just diverting the discussion without adding anything.

hate speech=/=hate crimes

UK has had, and still does have very aggressive legislation to combat "hate speech" and offensive speech in general.

It's not very far fetched that such a statement could have been in violation of said laws, but that certainly wouldn't make it a hate crime.

While jkots wording could have been better, there's still a very important distinction here.

Well, if there's very aggressive legislation to combat "hate speech", is it unreasonable to call this target of combat "hate crimes" (or hate "crimes")?

With such aggressive legislation, I'm a bit wary of even going to the UK (I'm not a native speaker of English.)

Yes, hate crimes are generally defined by the perpetrators motivations.

I think take away is that HN crowd has no sense of humor.

I got a chuckle out of this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11699860

More accurate would probably be to say, given the power of a vote, people with no sense of humor will use it to punish humorous comments. I feel like the larger majority typically rewards comments that are both humorous and provide content to the discussion.

Everything could be hate speech for someone. Which what makes said laws arbitrary and dangerous.

>People were charged (and jailed)

The question is: Where? In the UK, or in NK? Also: if something is legal doesn't make it legitimate.

Don't know about jailing, but UK certainly has a tendency to fine (and otherwise very aggressively pursue) people for saying far less offensive things.

Look at the public order act for example.

It very well could, the UK has some very interesting laws. Just imagine if he had used the word 'bomb'.

In Germany, you can go to prison for up to 3 years[1] for insulting a head of state, organs or representatives of foreign states.

1. http://en.alalam.ir/news/1819424

And in the UK it was illegal to insult people until 2014 http://reformsection5.org.uk/

And makes you wonder if one will prefer NK way to UK libel laws.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com