Another US citizen detained in North Korea

North Korean officials have reported that they now have a second American in their custody for illegally crossing over the border from China. The first is, of course, Robert Park, the Christian missionary who crossed the border and planned to get caught so that he could raise awareness of the human rights abuses, particularly against Christians in the country. (Of course, what he probably did, instead, was start a new persecution of what few Christians are left in the country after 50 years of communism..)

Now reports are starting to come forward about this second detainee. Supposedly, according to the Dong A Ilbo... (which is a South Korean news source, and we know how reliable those are...) this man crossed the border because he wanted to join the North Korean army and escape from the capitalist world.

Sounds like a nice plan. Good luck to him if that really was his real motivation for entering NK. He's definitely as far from capitalism as you can possibly get. I bet working in a labor prison camp for no money and hardly any food is just what he had in mind.

I'll keep following this story to see if a more plausible explanation arises.

Reuters Article
Bloomberg Article