Saturday, June 24, 2017

Too bad for Otto

A lot of noise outlets and blogs have spent time on the story of Otto Warmbier, the repat from North Korea who died. I want to start by extending sympathy to his family. It is never easy to lose a child or sibling, and the circumstances of his death make it all the worse.
As for Otto, well, he pretty much fucked himself. I'm not saying he deserved it, death for stealing a picture of lil Kimmy? GMAFB!
The simple fact though is he went to a country led by a mad man and known for their tendency to take hostages and abuse people. Their own as well as foreigners.
Then he stole something. Supposedly. After an interrogation by the NorKs, a saint would be convinced he was a devil worshiper. Seriously, a poster of Kim Jong Un?
The sad part is that in a sane world, the leader of a nation would not be upset that a foreigner took a poster of him, it is spreading his propaganda far beyond his personal reaches. That to most leaders would be a good thing. It is like the Gideon Bibles at the motels. Had he taken and defaced it, that might be another story. Kim passed up a chance for a diplomatic score on this on, but he is not interested in diplomacy, his version is dipshitplomacy.
Otto knew or should have known that before he ever considered going to North Korea. He put himself in the fire and he got burnt far worse than he expected. His family is stuck with his mess.
North Korea should be a no go zone. If you travel there, you are 100% on your own, and if any thing happens to you there, it is called suicide. If by chance you make it back alive, your passport gets revoked, and you do a few hours community service.
Heck, given how unstable lil Kim has been, he is lucky we didn't nuke the place during his visit.

2 comments:

Gregory said...

I too will never understand why anyone would want to travel to Nork. Just plain dumb. And stealing the picture was the epitome of dumb. Something about the Darwin award here. Although I do feel sorry for his parents.

JeremyR said...

Same, thanks.