Otto's case is sad. But what is the plan to manage a crap ton of unruly Norks after you ice the fatboty?

My God, what kind of a sick, heartless soul could possibly feel this way? What a pathetic POS. To so callously, so flippantly brush off such incredibly cruel treatment of an innocent young man while blaming him for not knowing any better takes a special kind of cretan. Holy crap are you ever a scumbag... wow... just shaking my head...

Kim'll get popped by someone next to him. There will be no unruly Norks.

Outrage is fine, but I have yet to hear specifically what the US govt was expected to do, to get the young man back. Impose unilateral economic sanctions? Already doing. Pressure China to impose heavy sanctions? They won't, for their own reasons. Impose heavy sanctions on China to force them to impose heavy sanctions on North Korea? Gonna be hard to explain to millions of now-unemployed Americans that you threw the economy into the toilet to get back one person. Missile strike on North Korea? Sorry about the millions of South Koreans and thousands of U.S. troops who then end up dead. Assassinate the fat one? Not easy, plus bummer for all those millions of dead South Koreans and U.S. troops.

Sorry, if you are an American and you go to North Korea, you are putting yourself beyond any protection of the US government. Might as well go on holiday to ISIS territory and then complain that the US government isn't stopping your beheading.

China doesn't appear to be too enrolled.

lol!

Thanks for confirming Jeff was spot on in his assessment of you.

indoctrination
absolute control
regular purges of those who drum to a different beat.
fear
fear
repression

They had some time to perfect things.

It's just a realistic assessment of what happened.

I see tons of outrage but not at us or by us.

Guy went into a bad neighborhood. What's the mayor supposed to do? Wreck entire city blocks, disrupt everything, make more enemies and spend allot of money?

Otto's legacy will be an appreciation for Liberty and Due Process.

Absolutely. Little Fat Bastard is exactly that, and a sumbeyotch, but in that country, he's god. So this is a lot less like blaming a chick in a short skirt at a dance club who got roofied and more like blaming a kid that strapped on 50# of raw meat and climbed 2 walls to get into the lion's habitat at a zoo. Or if you want to stick with your analogy, it's like a hottie getting drunk, getting slutted up in her tiniest club attire and then running into a prison specifically housing sexual offenders that have rioted so there is no prison staff. Yeah, I'm pretty sure you can actually blame her in that case.

North Korea is NOT a place to go unless you are prepared to die at worst. This is not Motion going to South Africa or Honduras or Lebanon or Jordan or Israel on one of his vacations. This is North Korea where there are NO CIVIL RIGHTS other than the right to potentially be prosecuted, possibly for no reason other than some made up sheit, and killed if for no other reason than they are a bunch of nut jobs that HATE THE US.

This guy has killed his own trusted advisors, military guys and family in insane ways just because it gave him a chubby.

They only folks that should go to N Korea are paid spies that know that they may die in the service of their country. Anyone else that goes and comes back is just lucky.

Because he kills anyone that he wants to, including family and anyone else that his whim dictates. To kill him, you'd probably have to be really close to him, and even then, if you are currently close to him, and then kill him, you'll almost certainly be killed by whoever is left unless you work out a big conspiracy ahead of time. So you haven't gained yourself anything. To work out the big conspiracy ahead of time is risking death. I assume this is a lot like E Germany with the Stasi with everyone watching everyone else and ready to turn anyone else in.

I think the problem is folks judge the NK culture, legal system and ruler applying their own standards and experiences as U.S. citizens.

Their normal is not the same as our normal. They are very far apart.

Exactly.

But yet our last administration was able to get back a transgender traitor by the release of known terrorists. Perhaps if Otto had been transgender (or of the correct political identity group) he would have been home in record time.

I find it hard to believe there was nothing that could be done......

While I feel very sorry for the parents losing their son, I also think they have to bare some of the responsibility. They didn't teach him to make wise decisions. As a parent I ask myself what type of parent would let their offspring even consider going to NK, let alone actually go there. I would not expect our government to do anything to get him back when they've already told him he shouldn't be going in the first place.

then you're unrealistic.

Going to NK is not any less foolish than vacationing in Iraq or Syria.

I hear Raqqa is really nice for white, Christian Americans this time of year. Especially head strong women that think they should be able to dress however they like.

I don't wonder around south central Los Angeles for the exact same reasons.

Anybody that has raised kids in this era will realize that, no matter how well you raise them or what you teach them, kids under 25 lack the common sense and judgement of older adults. We adults think we do a good job but the kids are also raised by their peers and they don't see the world in the same way we do (and did, at their age) and you'd be a fool to think you were their greatest influence.

So, blame the kid for being there in the first place, if you want. You are all twice or three times his age and should, and do, know better.

Having said that, I doubt just about every aspect of the story of his imprisonment. I think he was taken as a political pawn and it's pretty likely that nothing in the NK narrative has the slightest ring of truth. The video shows nothing. If you study it for very long, you'll note that the figure doesn't have the shape of Otto, doesn't dress like Otto and doesn't act like Otto. That person puts what looks like a portrait of Kim Idiot #2 on the floor rather reverently, like a good Korean would do. The hallway is rather well lit for NK at night. The video is conveniently fuzzy, made more so in the close-up version.

Then you get to his confession. That makes no sense, which means the NK goons wrote it for him. It describes a plot no westerner would concoct, because we don't think like they do in NK.

Then, consider the statements of his older, male roommate for the trip who says that this is out of character for the Otto he spent almost a week with and, oh by the way, he doesn't recall noticing Otto missing during the night.

Various other videos show what looks like, to my eyes at least, a drugged Otto being hauled around, fingerprinted, etc. Then, there are the intelligence reports that indicate that he was treated differently than most western prisoners... the bull**** story from NK about what happened to him... etc.

We may eventually learn the real story, or we may not, but I think he was hand-picked to be a pawn by NK and his only crime was being in the wrong place. And I can tell you that I will not put any blame on his shoulders for that. He paid a high price and I'm not going to add to that with stupid, judgemental comments. I hope something good comes of his sacrifice.

JR