S9, Chapter 4: Into the Gulags

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Tapes from the Dark Side contains descriptions
of violence and sexuality. Listener discretion is

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advised. On February twenty nine,
twenty sixteen, Auto Warmbier made his speech,

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and we have now heard the entirety
of that speech. All of the

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general facts seem to be correct,
the names, dates, addresses, But

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this isn't what interests us. It's
the wild claims that Auto makes, and

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I want to go through them with
you, one by one. The first

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and most obvious is the awkward phrasing
that Auto uses terms such as crime task

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and crime commitment. Now, there
is actually an explanation for this, aside

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from the obvious theory that the speech
was written for him, which is that

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most of the people in attendance at
the hearing or speech or whatever you want

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to call it, we're North Korean. Now, some of them were also

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Chinese, a couple were from Russia, and a few were from Japan.

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But on the other hand, North
Koreans are taught English from an early age,

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and so it's likely that those in
attendance, even if they were a

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Korean, could understand Auto. And
so we're left with the likely explanation that

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the speech was written in advance by
someone other than Auto. Now let's get

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to the meet of Auto's story.
This bizarre claim that the Friendship United Methodist

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Church located in Wyoming, Ohio,
was somehow in league with the CIA,

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in that a deaconess and her son
convinced Auto over a friendly dinner to travel

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to North Korea to steal a poster
to hang in this church. Now,

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in return, Otto says that he
was offered a used car worth around ten

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thousand dollars. And in addition to
this, if for some reason he was

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captured and held in North Korea,
and definitely his family would be given two

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hundred thousand dollars. But let's set
the two hundred thousand dollars aside for now

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and just consider for a second if
logically a used car would be worth stealing

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a sign from a foreign country.
Now, if it was any other country

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other than North Korea, it might
sound reasonable. I've traveled abroad before,

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and there's many countries that if I
was offered ten thousand dollars, I might

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consider stealing a sign, especially if
it meant I could keep this podcast going

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for a little longer. But in
a place like North Korea, for me,

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that wouldn't even be a conversation.
Now. Otto says that his family

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was hard up for money, and
there actually might be some truth to this.

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Now we know his family owned a
house that a praise today is worth

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around one point two million dollars.
But let's travel back to twenty fourteen for

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a moment. Two years before Auto
took his trip to North Korea, Wat's

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father, Fred Warrenbeer, was the
owner of a small company near Cincinnati named

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Finishing Technology Incorporated. They specialized in
metal finishing services. They mainly dealt in

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food processing parts, but they also
did electrical components. Their clients were from

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all over the world, from automotive
to aerospace to the defense industry, and

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in twenty fourteen their business was actually
struggling. I found a blog that Fred

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Warrenbeer wrote for for the New York
Times and one article from twenty fourteen titled

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introducing Managing. Something had to change, he writes, looking back, I

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realized I developed a lot of bad
habits when business was good. Background nineteen

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ninety eight, business was very good. There was plenty of work to go

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around, and price was not an
issue because the demand was so strong.

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One friend observed, if you can't
make it now, You'll never make it

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now. It was pretty much true. Fred goes on to explain through the

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blog how his business expanded during those
years because of the booming economy, and

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he might have spread himself a little
too thin. Obviously, I don't have

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access to Fred Warnbier's books, and
I have no way to know definitively,

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but I would say to consider that
although their family was well educated and had

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high hopes, it's also true that
Otto Warrenber had two siblings who were coming

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of age to go to college.
Auto had just entered college, and the

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weight of tuition is not something to
be underestimated, especially while you're trying to

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finish paying down a mortgage and also
saving for a retirement. Having said that,

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and having gotten to know a little
bit of the Warrenber parents through interviews

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that I've read and I've watched,
I don't think there's any way they would

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have agreed to let Auto go to
North Korea to try to steal a sign

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just so he could have a used
car. In his speech, Auto says

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that he told his mom his plan, and although she cried, she ultimately

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agreed to let him go. That
right there might be enough to blow a

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hole right through this entire story.
But let's set that aside for a second

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and give the most charitable interpretation possible. Is there any chance that Auto on

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his own might have taken his fate
into his own hands? And I think

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to answer that question, we have
to fully understand what the gamble was.

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On one hand, we have a
used car worth around ten thousand dollars,

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But on the other hand, if
he was caught, what would the consequences

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be? And when I began to
ask this question, I was faced with

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horrors that are beyond human comprehension.
We're entering some very dark territory here.

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I get the same gut feeling I
did when I told Jesse Washington's story in

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season two, which is some of
the work I'm most proud of. If

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you happen to misseason two, I
recommend going in listening to that, and

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before we fully dive into what was
at stake, I feel it might be

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a good time to say this that, no matter if Auto did steal a

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poster or not, it's objectively clear
to any rational person that he didn't deserve

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what ultimately happened to him. In
twenty fourteen, the United Nations conducted a

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thorough study of North Korea, and
this is what they found. Systematic,

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widespread, and gross human rights violations
have been in our being committed by the

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Democratic People's Republic of Korea, its
institutions, and its officials. In many

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instances, the violations of human rights
found by the Commission constitute crimes against humanity.

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These are not mere excesses of the
state. They are essential components of

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a political system that has moved far
beyond the ideals on which it claims to

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be founded. The gravity, scale, and nature of these violations reveal a

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state that does not have any parallel
in the contemporary world. Political scientists of

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the twentieth century characterize this type of
political organization as a totalitarian state, a

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state that does not content itself with
assuring the authoritarian rule of a small group

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of people, but seeks to dominate
every aspect of his citizens' lives and terrorizes

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them from within. A quick history
lesson, and I promise it will be

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quick. North Korea was created in
a nineteen forty five after the surrender of

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Japan in World War Two. Korea
was essentially split down the middle. On

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the thirty eighth parallel, the Soviet
Union took the North, in the United

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States took the South. Kim Il
Sung was the ruler of the North and

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in the South known anti communist leader
Singhamrie. On June twenty fifth, nineteen

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fifty North Korea invaded its neighbor in
the South. United Nations forces led by

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the United States fought back the invasion, and finally, three years later,

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in July twenty seventh, nineteen fifty
three, a ceasefire was signed, but

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the tension between the two neighbors would
remain to this day. In just a

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few short years, most of the
United States and Soviet forces had withdrawn and

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something of an experiment began, the
communists in the North versus the pro democracy

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legionnaires in the South. Now,
this show is not interested in debating the

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pros and cons of economic or political
systems. What I'm interested in, and

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what I think you're interested in,
is the truth. And the truth is

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it's a fool's errand to try to
summarize nearly half a century of political and

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economic developments in just a few sentences. But if I had to try and

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go something like this. Krushev took
control of the Soviet Union and began to

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distance himself from Stalinism. North Korea, in contrast, grew increasingly isolationists and

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its ideals as it delve deeper into
communism in the nineteen seventies. While South

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Korea was experiencing unprecedented economic growth and
social freedom through democracy, its twin to

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the North was almost entirely stagnant.
And then the end of the Cold War

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did the unthinkable. It brought westernization
to China, and North Korea shuddered in

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disgust. The fall of the Soviet
Union in nineteen ninety one had a devastating

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effect on North Korea's already stifled economy. Trade was impacted, production halted,

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and through the nineties, North Korea
suffered a famine that killed nearly half a

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million people. The effects of malnutritions
still rippled through their society to this very

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day, and nearly thirty years later, they depend on food aid from China

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so their own citizens don't start to
death. Now, when people begin to

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experience extreme forms of hunger, a
different side of humanity emerges, you might

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even say a dark side. This
kind of single minded hunger often eliminates common

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forms of decency, sense of ethics
or morality, people can quickly turn into

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savages. And so the question that
North Korea began asking itself is how do

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you control a population that has turned
on its leadership. Their answer, you

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create the world's largest perpetual collection of
concentration camps and brutally tortured to death anyone

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who dares to question authority, and
that's exactly what North Korea did. These

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concentration camps are sometimes referred to as
the North Korean gulags, and the conditions

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inside these camps is beyond human comprehension. We can read these words, listen

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to these stories, but I would
be hard pressed to believe that you could

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truly understand and this kind of utter
depravity. It's hard to know exactly how

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many camps are active at any one
given time. That's because North Korea is

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constantly opening new camps and closing old
ones. But according to satellite images in

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firsthand reports, there are an estimated
fifteen to twenty five camps in operation.

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At old times, these camps hold
around a mind boggling two hundred thousand prisoners.

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Now, the type of work day
that you experience in a camp will

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depend on whether you're a political prisoner, but the general makeup of the day

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seems to remain fairly constant. Twelve
hours of hard physical labor, followed by

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re education classes after work where they
study and memorize speeches. Ayu Gim was

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arrested and sent to the camps when
he tried to cross the border into China

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when he was sixteen. He says
that you became obsessed with one thing.

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Food. Sometimes he got lucky and
we're able to catch a rat or two

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as a snack, which you'd skin, dry the meat out and eat usually

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raw. If you're trying to cook
the rats, the cards would smell the

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meat or fire and catch you sleeping. Conditions were horrific. Fifty people to

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one room would just barely enough space
to huddle or lie down. Now,

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those who were political prisoners would often
be in the camp with their entire family.

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Say, for example, I was
suspected of a political crime, they

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would also take my sister, my
mother, and my father to the camps.

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If I had any children, they
would automatically become prisoners in the camps

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with me indefinitely. They would also
take my grandmother, my uncle and his

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family, his three children. Because
of one suspected political crime. You could

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have an entire generation wiped out.
Those in the camps are not treated as

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human beings. They are considered slaves
and subhuman. If you commit a crime

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against the leaders of North Korea,
you are the enemy. To read you

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one description of the human experimentation that
is carried out in one of the camps.

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I remember reading this article many years
ago, and luckily it's been archived

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through the website archive dot org.
Comes from the Telegraph in the United Kingdom,

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and it's about a man named Kwan
Yuck. He was a North Korean

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intelligence agent and he eventually was able
to defact to the South. He was

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forty five years old at the date
of this interview in two thousand and four,

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and he is one of the very
few that was able to escape the

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prisons of North Korea. Even as
a guard. He was head of security

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at prison Camp twenty two, which
is where some of these alleged human experimentations

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happened. Most of the prisoners in
Camp twenty two were there because of the

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quote hereditary rule. Kwan says,
there's a watchdog system in place between members

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of five different families. So if
I was caught trying to escaped. Then

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not just my family members, but
all the rest of our four neighboring families

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are held collectively responsible. Quan was
part of a group that was carrying out

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chemical experiments on political prisoners. They
were testing various forms of gases. Again

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from Quan, the most unforgettable scene
I remember was when I watched an entire

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family being killed. They were put
inside the chamber and I saw them all

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suffocate to death. The last person
to die was the youngest son, who

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was crying for his parents and eventually
died. The youngest were children, and

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the oldest ones were in their sixties. They were stripped naked and put into

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the chamber. Even though they were
dying. I saw the parents trying to

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save their children by giving them mouth
to mouth resuscitation. A former prisoner who

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miraculously survived the North Korean camps lee
soon All, testified to the US Senate

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and also wrote a memoir of her
experiences called Eyes of the Tailless Animals.

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She describes witnessing an experiment in which
fifty healthy female prisoners were fed poisoned cabbage

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leaves. She said it only took
twenty minutes for all fifty to die vomiting

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blood and bleeding annally. Missus Kimashuk
was sent to Camp number eighteen a pook

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tongue at the age of thirteen.
Her grandfather escaped allegedly to South Korea,

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and that was the reason for the
relocation of the whole family. She spent

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their twenty eight years. They would
signal us to come over and make us

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sit down. There was a specific
position in which we all were made to

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sit. We were made to put
our hands behind our backs and kneel with

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our heads raised and our mouths open. It's spit flam into our mouths.

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If we swallowed, they would reward
us by not hitting us, But if

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we gagged even a little bit,
they would beat us severely. They were

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taught to treat us cruelly. They
didn't care about human rights get at.

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As the children got older, their
heads got bigger, but they didn't get

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taller because of their poor diet.
Their legs and arms were thin, but

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their heads. Their heads were so
big they didn't have a normal shape.

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They didn't even look like human beings. Be right back after this break,

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stay with us. Mister Leon as
personal bodyguard to Kim Jong ild for ten

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years. He later made critical comments
against North Korean regime, was arrested in

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China, sent back to North Korea, tortured and sent to political prison Camp's

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number fifteen in Yodok. The prisoners
were given very little corn, but the

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cows, on the other hand,
ate it freely, and so the cow

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dung always had corn in it the
older men. Usually it was only the

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older men would pick the corn out
of the dung and eat it. They

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had developed such a strong will to
live. We were like dogs fighting over

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scraps. That's what we'd become.
Kim Jong ild turned people into beasts.

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This next clip is of Phil Robertson, the Asia Deputy director of the group

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Human Rights Watch, built by association
in North Korea. Means that if you

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commit a crime, not only will
you be punished, but also three generations

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of your family will be punished.
Your grandparents, your parents, your grandchildren.

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These and other crimes are now being
investigated by a UN Commission of Inquiry

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established by the UN Human Rights Council
in Geneva. We fully expect that will

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receive the support of international community in
demanding accountability for the crimes that have been

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perpetrated by the North Korean government against
own people. And our last clip is

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from Joanne Hosaniak, who is the
deputy director general of the group Citizens Alliance

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for North Korean Human Rights. Well, North Korea is a terror state,

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bases all of its policies on controlling
the society, and this control is based

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on the fear. So that is
the most powerful method to really control the

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whole state, and it really has
worked very well for the regime. Otto

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Warrenbier was not a dumb kid.
In fact, quite the opposite was true.

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He was one of the smartest in
his class. And if he was

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going to visit North Korea, I
cannot imagine a scenario where he didn't do

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extensive research on the country, it's
history, in its customs. He would

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have been more than aware of the
vast network of concentration camps that existed in

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the country, and he would have
known that any political crime, no matter

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how seemingly trivial, could very well
land him in one of these camps.

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With this in mind, we have
to ask ourselves, is it plausible that

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Auto warm Beer, a college kid
with a bright feature and finance at a

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renowned college and a loving family who
although they were struggling so much, we're

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doing fairly well financially, would have
knowingly risked his very life for used car

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worth ten thousand dollars. On the
basis of these facts alone, I think

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we can safely come to a conclusion
as to whether Otto warm Beer's speech was

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his own genuine confession or rather a
carefully crafted lie written for him by the

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North Korean government who forced him to
perform it as convincingly as possible under the

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threat of torture and where death.
Otto was facing a trial which would occur

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on March sixteenth of twenty sixteen,
two and a half months after his initial

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arrest, North Korea held a one
hour trial in its Supreme Court where they

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formally convicted Auto of subversion in an
attempt to quote impair the unity of its

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people under Articles sixty of its Criminal
Code. And that's when Auto was given

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his sentence, which I'll share with
you on the next episode of Tapes from

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the Dark Side. I'm tz Borden
and I've been your host today, and

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I've decided that for the month of
September, fifty percent of all of our

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Patreon money will go directly to the
nonprofit group liberty in North Korea. One

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of the most important things they're doing
is helping to rescue defectors who need immediate

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assistance in reaching a safe Harbard country
such as South Korea. While living in

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China, they are under your constant
threat of being deported back to North Korea

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where they will be forced to re
enter the concentration camps. I'm also going

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to put a link to their PayPal
in the show notes in case you would

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00:21:56.440 --> 00:22:02.160
like to donate directly. According to
the Citizens Alliance website, the cost of

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00:22:02.240 --> 00:22:07.000
saving one life is approximately two to
three thousand US dollars. We have the

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00:22:07.039 --> 00:22:12.519
ability to literally save people's lives,
and if you like to join our Patreon

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00:22:12.680 --> 00:22:18.160
and help support us and this organization
that way, you can do that at

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00:22:18.200 --> 00:22:26.640
patreon dot com. Slash Tapes from
the Dark Side, the documentary that we

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00:22:26.799 --> 00:22:30.640
featured clips from at the end of
this episode was from the group called Human

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00:22:30.720 --> 00:22:37.359
Rights Watch, posted in two and
fourteen. The link to that entire video

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will also be in the show notes. Thank you to Augusta Trevororum, whose

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original music was featured on the show
today. Thank you to Carissa Collins,

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who was the head writer for the
season. Thank you to all of our

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supporters on Patreon. Our newest five
dollars members are Tricia Willis, Amanda Alexander,

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00:22:59.319 --> 00:23:06.000
Susie Lane Ward, Aerial Clemer,
Emily and Michelle Masher. In Our

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00:23:06.000 --> 00:23:12.240
fifteen dollars Producer tier level members are
Christy Reese, Tyler Ernster, Violet Ross,

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00:23:12.559 --> 00:23:19.079
Greg b Angela, m F Santana
Savine, Alexis, Kathleen Vanessa Miller,

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Sherry Sly, Noah Schultz, Shelley
Jones, Olivia Schmid, Amber Catlett,

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00:23:26.640 --> 00:23:33.960
Chris Schaumberg, and Gina Oybunco.
I'm getting ready to send out a

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00:23:34.079 --> 00:23:41.519
batch of Patreon rewards stickers, enamel
pins, mugs, whatever you've got in

260
00:23:41.599 --> 00:23:45.559
the tier that you signed up for, So if you want to sneak in

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there and get in this next round
of rewards shipments, right now is the

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00:23:49.799 --> 00:23:55.440
perfect time to sign up. We
also have a new surprise coming to Patreon

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00:23:55.960 --> 00:23:59.680
very soon, a new exclusive series. I don't want to say much more

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00:23:59.720 --> 00:24:02.720
about it because there is a little
more work that I have to put into

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00:24:02.759 --> 00:24:04.880
it before it's ready. But anyways, if you want to get updates on

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00:24:04.960 --> 00:24:10.240
that, see behind the scenes stuff, and get rewards, sign up today.

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At patreon dot com slash Tapes from
the dark Side. It takes about

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00:24:15.480 --> 00:24:18.400
one minute to sign up. The
Patreon link will also be in the show

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00:24:18.440 --> 00:24:23.839
notes. And remember, until next
time, try to enjoy the daylight.

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How about what need to report?
Those need to talk quote oh quarto Night