Otto Warmbier versus the Republic of Torture
By Robert Collins
As he announced the re-listing of North Korea as a state sponsor of
terrorism on November 20, President Trump referred to the death of Otto
Warmbier while in North Korean custody. The young Ohio native’s death was a tragedy,
and just the latest occurrence of the unbelievable cruelty that human beings suffer
at the hands of the Kim family regime. The parents of Otto were interviewed on
national television about the arrival of their son from North Korea and the
terrible condition he was in. Mr. Warmbier expressed how it was obvious to him
that his son had been tortured due to the condition of his teeth and a severe
cut on his foot.
When Otto arrived back home, doctors at the University of Cincinnati
Medical Center could not determine the exact nature of the injuries that left
Otto with “an extensive loss of brain tissue.” Following that, local coroners stated
that they could not see decisive evidence or proof of torture. However, the
human rights community is well informed on North Korea’s use of torture against
those imprisoned by the regime’s party-state. Historically, tens of thousands
of North Koreans have suffered the same fate as Otto–death at the hands of the
regime’s security apparatus–as have other foreigners in decades past.
North Korea’s criminal justice system is guided by the Kim regime’s
political ideology far more than criminal law. Regime founder Kim Il-sung and
his son-successor Kim Jong-il publicly stated that the law exists to serve
political purposes and those purposes are designed to serve the North’s supreme
leader. Consequently, those who are accused of a political crime are automatically
treated as an enemy of the state. The worst “enemies” are those that slander
the personage or name of Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il, or Kim Jong-un. Otto allegedly
tore down a propaganda poster praising Kim Jong-il. Under the Kim regime, such
an act is regarded as a direct threat to the security of the supreme leader. In
notorious North Korean practice, such a crime is punishable by the most
draconian of methods, as evidenced by the regime’s slaughter for the past five
and a half years of hundreds of ranking military, government, and Party cadre
perceived as opposing or disrespecting Kim Jong-un. Hundreds of testimonies from
North Korean defectors confirmed torture while imprisoned or being investigated.
For those arrested by the Kim regime’s security apparatus, torture
begins immediately after arrest. The Ministry of People’s Security (MPS) is
North Korea’s national police, and MPS officers are stationed at every level of
North Korean society down to the village level. Unlike countries where the
police conduct their mission according to law, MPS officers, as well as their
counterparts in the Ministry of State Security (MSS), employ the Korean
Workers’ Party’s (KWP) doctrinal “ten principles of monolithic ideology” (TPMI)
as their base justification for arrest. Though North Korea has a criminal code
delineating what constitutes a crime, the TPMI is used to judge the type, severity,
and nature of the crime. Every North Korean is responsible for memorizing these
principles in school, the workplace, and at home. Police officers, members of
the other security services, and legal officials are evaluated weekly in a KWP
format on their performance of duty in relation to the TPMI. Individual careers
are forged through showing the chain of command thoroughness in vetting alleged,
potential, and actual “criminals” through the prism of the TPMI.
After Otto was arrested, standard North Korean police practice would
have handed him over from the Pyongyang Police Bureau to the MPS Pretrial
Examination Bureau (PEB). MPS PEB officers are responsible for criminal investigations
and for reporting the results of the investigations not only to the local
prosecutor’s office, but also to their KWP representatives. The latter are
those within the Party that judge the MPS PEB officers and their counterparts
in the MSS PEB on their efficiency in protecting the supreme leader and the
regime. PEB officers are notorious in North Korea for their ruthless investigative
methods based on extracting confessions from the accused. As attested by
numerous North Korean escapees, confessions are the “queen of evidence” and
torture is employed systematically and ruthlessly to obtain such confessions.
To succeed in their specific profession, each PEB officer must develop
competency in torture to extract the confessions that prosecutors employ in criminal
trials. Depending on the nature of the case, this torture continues during and even
after the trial if the prisoner does not comply with instructions on behavior
and obedience to directives. In the case of many arrested for political crimes,
trials are bypassed and torture becomes part of the retribution and sentencing
as the arrested are sent directly to political prison camps. PEB officers are
professionally rewarded for their efficiency.
The type of torture Otto must have experienced is quite telling in terms
of his likely resistance. The vast majority of foreigners succumb to the
pressures and threats of torture early and comply with directives while in
custody. However, resistance to the demands of the PEB officers and prosecutors–whether
those demands be for propaganda purposes (which is the case most of the time)
or actions in support of regime intent in foreign policy–will result in further
and more specific torture.
This
torture does not apply to all. Many foreigners who are arrested are handled for
eventual release to suit a diplomatic purpose—but not all. Even as far back as
the 1960s, Venezuelan Ali Lameda and Frenchman Jacques Sedillot served
as translators in North Korea but were subsequently accused of being spies and
imprisoned. They were tortured regularly and the latter died in Pyongyang. In 1982, Joseph White deserted from the U.S. Army’s 2nd Infantry
Division and crossed the DMZ. He suspiciously ended up drowning in a North
Korean river two years later.
Otto’s
condition upon arrival in Cincinnati indicates that Otto resisted PEB officer
demands. For the time period Otto was tortured, it is apparent that he bravely
resisted the torturers face-to-face, thus the torture. The intensity of the
torture should not be underestimated. The PEB officers likely miscalculated the
intensity and impact of their torture on Otto in terms of what they thought
they could get away with. Several forms of torture would not have left visible external
trauma, including water-boarding, electrical shock, and physical confinement in
small boxes.
Those who understand the functioning of the North Korean internal
security system in detail will be able to tell that Otto likely displayed
courage in the face of torture by the most brutal of modern regimes.
North Korea’s practice of torture of individuals in detention violates
Articles 7 and 10 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,
which North Korea acceded to in 1981. Article 7 states, “No one shall be
subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or
punishment,” while Article 10(1) states, “All persons deprived of their liberty
shall be treated with humanity and with respect for the inherent dignity of the
human person.” As part of two Universal Periodic Review cycles for North Korea
to date, 19 recommendations by UN Member States to North Korea have explicitly
addressed torture. These recommendations call for North Korea to accede to or
ratify the Convention against Torture, take immediate steps to stop the use
of torture and ill-treatment in all instances of deprivation of freedom,
and grant the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Special Rapporteurs
on Torture and Violence against Women access to its detention facilities.
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