S9, Chapter 4: Into the Gulags

0:04 Tapes from the Dark Side contains descriptions of violence and sexuality. Listener discretion is advised. On February twenty nine, twenty sixteen, Auto Warmbier made his speech, and we have now heard the entirety of that speech. All of the general facts seem to be correct, the names, dates, addresses, But this isn't what interests us. It's the wild claims that Auto makes, and I want to go through them with you, one by one. The first and most obvious is the awkward phrasing that Auto uses terms such as crime task and crime commitment. Now, there is actually an explanation for this, aside from the obvious theory that the speech was written for him, which is that most of the people in attendance at the hearing or speech or whatever you want to call it, we're North Korean. Now, some of them were also Chinese, a couple were from Russia, and a few were from Japan.

1:11 But on the other hand, North Koreans are taught English from an early age, and so it's likely that those in attendance, even if they were a Korean, could understand Auto. And so we're left with the likely explanation that the speech was written in advance by someone other than Auto. Now let's get to the meet of Auto's story. This bizarre claim that the Friendship United Methodist Church located in Wyoming, Ohio, was somehow in league with the CIA, in that a deaconess and her son convinced Auto over a friendly dinner to travel to North Korea to steal a poster to hang in this church. Now, in return, Otto says that he was offered a used car worth around ten thousand dollars. And in addition to this, if for some reason he was captured and held in North Korea, and definitely his family would be given two hundred thousand dollars. But let's set the two hundred thousand dollars aside for now and just consider for a second if logically a used car would be worth stealing a sign from a foreign country. Now, if it was any other country other than North Korea, it might sound reasonable. I've traveled abroad before, and there's many countries that if I was offered ten thousand dollars, I might consider stealing a sign, especially if it meant I could keep this podcast going for a little longer. But in a place like North Korea, for me, that wouldn't even be a conversation. Now. Otto says that his family

2:42 was hard up for money, and there actually might be some truth to this. Now we know his family owned a house that a praise today is worth around one point two million dollars. But let's travel back to twenty fourteen for a moment. Two years before Auto took his trip to North Korea, Wat's father, Fred Warrenbeer, was the owner of a small company near Cincinnati named Finishing Technology Incorporated. They specialized in metal finishing services. They mainly dealt in food processing parts, but they also did electrical components. Their clients were from all over the world, from automotive to aerospace to the defense industry, and in twenty fourteen their business was actually struggling. I found a blog that Fred Warrenbeer wrote for for the New York Times and one article from twenty fourteen titled introducing Managing. Something had to change, he writes, looking back, I realized I developed a lot of bad habits when business was good. Background nineteen ninety eight, business was very good. There was plenty of work to go around, and price was not an issue because the demand was so strong.

3:54 One friend observed, if you can't make it now, You'll never make it now. It was pretty much true. Fred goes on to explain through the blog how his business expanded during those years because of the booming economy, and he might have spread himself a little too thin. Obviously, I don't have access to Fred Warnbier's books, and I have no way to know definitively, but I would say to consider that although their family was well educated and had high hopes, it's also true that Otto Warrenber had two siblings who were coming of age to go to college. Auto had just entered college, and the weight of tuition is not something to be underestimated, especially while you're trying to finish paying down a mortgage and also saving for a retirement. Having said that, and having gotten to know a little bit of the Warrenber parents through interviews that I've read and I've watched, I don't think there's any way they would have agreed to let Auto go to North Korea to try to steal a sign just so he could have a used car. In his speech, Auto says that he told his mom his plan, and although she cried, she ultimately agreed to let him go. That right there might be enough to blow a hole right through this entire story. But let's set that aside for a second and give the most charitable interpretation possible. Is there any chance that Auto on his own might have taken his fate into his own hands? And I think

5:26 to answer that question, we have to fully understand what the gamble was. On one hand, we have a used car worth around ten thousand dollars, But on the other hand, if he was caught, what would the consequences be? And when I began to ask this question, I was faced with horrors that are beyond human comprehension. We're entering some very dark territory here. I get the same gut feeling I did when I told Jesse Washington's story in season two, which is some of the work I'm most proud of. If you happen to misseason two, I recommend going in listening to that, and before we fully dive into what was at stake, I feel it might be a good time to say this that, no matter if Auto did steal a poster or not, it's objectively clear to any rational person that he didn't deserve what ultimately happened to him. In twenty fourteen, the United Nations conducted a thorough study of North Korea, and this is what they found. Systematic, widespread, and gross human rights violations have been in our being committed by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, its institutions, and its officials. In many instances, the violations of human rights found by the Commission constitute crimes against humanity.

6:46 These are not mere excesses of the state. They are essential components of a political system that has moved far beyond the ideals on which it claims to be founded. The gravity, scale, and nature of these violations reveal a state that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world. Political scientists of the twentieth century characterize this type of political organization as a totalitarian state, a state that does not content itself with assuring the authoritarian rule of a small group of people, but seeks to dominate every aspect of his citizens' lives and terrorizes them from within. A quick history lesson, and I promise it will be quick. North Korea was created in a nineteen forty five after the surrender of Japan in World War Two. Korea was essentially split down the middle. On the thirty eighth parallel, the Soviet Union took the North, in the United States took the South. Kim Il Sung was the ruler of the North and in the South known anti communist leader Singhamrie. On June twenty fifth, nineteen fifty North Korea invaded its neighbor in the South. United Nations forces led by the United States fought back the invasion, and finally, three years later, in July twenty seventh, nineteen fifty three, a ceasefire was signed, but

8:18 the tension between the two neighbors would remain to this day. In just a few short years, most of the United States and Soviet forces had withdrawn and something of an experiment began, the communists in the North versus the pro democracy legionnaires in the South. Now, this show is not interested in debating the pros and cons of economic or political systems. What I'm interested in, and what I think you're interested in, is the truth. And the truth is it's a fool's errand to try to summarize nearly half a century of political and economic developments in just a few sentences. But if I had to try and go something like this. Krushev took control of the Soviet Union and began to distance himself from Stalinism. North Korea, in contrast, grew increasingly isolationists and its ideals as it delve deeper into communism in the nineteen seventies. While South Korea was experiencing unprecedented economic growth and social freedom through democracy, its twin to the North was almost entirely stagnant. And then the end of the Cold War did the unthinkable. It brought westernization to China, and North Korea shuddered in disgust. The fall of the Soviet Union in nineteen ninety one had a devastating effect on North Korea's already stifled economy. Trade was impacted, production halted, and through the nineties, North Korea suffered a famine that killed nearly half a

9:48 million people. The effects of malnutritions still rippled through their society to this very day, and nearly thirty years later, they depend on food aid from China so their own citizens don't start to death. Now, when people begin to experience extreme forms of hunger, a different side of humanity emerges, you might even say a dark side. This kind of single minded hunger often eliminates common forms of decency, sense of ethics or morality, people can quickly turn into savages. And so the question that North Korea began asking itself is how do you control a population that has turned on its leadership. Their answer, you create the world's largest perpetual collection of concentration camps and brutally tortured to death anyone who dares to question authority, and that's exactly what North Korea did. These concentration camps are sometimes referred to as the North Korean gulags, and the conditions inside these camps is beyond human comprehension. We can read these words, listen to these stories, but I would be hard pressed to believe that you could truly understand and this kind of utter depravity. It's hard to know exactly how many camps are active at any one given time. That's because North Korea is constantly opening new camps and closing old ones. But according to satellite images in firsthand reports, there are an estimated fifteen to twenty five camps in operation.

11:18 At old times, these camps hold around a mind boggling two hundred thousand prisoners. Now, the type of work day that you experience in a camp will depend on whether you're a political prisoner, but the general makeup of the day seems to remain fairly constant. Twelve hours of hard physical labor, followed by re education classes after work where they study and memorize speeches. Ayu Gim was arrested and sent to the camps when he tried to cross the border into China when he was sixteen. He says that you became obsessed with one thing. Food. Sometimes he got lucky and we're able to catch a rat or two as a snack, which you'd skin, dry the meat out and eat usually raw. If you're trying to cook the rats, the cards would smell the meat or fire and catch you sleeping. Conditions were horrific. Fifty people to one room would just barely enough space to huddle or lie down. Now, those who were political prisoners would often be in the camp with their entire family.

12:22 Say, for example, I was suspected of a political crime, they would also take my sister, my mother, and my father to the camps. If I had any children, they would automatically become prisoners in the camps with me indefinitely. They would also take my grandmother, my uncle and his family, his three children. Because of one suspected political crime. You could have an entire generation wiped out. Those in the camps are not treated as human beings. They are considered slaves and subhuman. If you commit a crime against the leaders of North Korea, you are the enemy. To read you one description of the human experimentation that is carried out in one of the camps.

13:05 I remember reading this article many years ago, and luckily it's been archived through the website archive dot org. Comes from the Telegraph in the United Kingdom, and it's about a man named Kwan Yuck. He was a North Korean intelligence agent and he eventually was able to defact to the South. He was forty five years old at the date of this interview in two thousand and four, and he is one of the very few that was able to escape the prisons of North Korea. Even as a guard. He was head of security at prison Camp twenty two, which is where some of these alleged human experimentations happened. Most of the prisoners in Camp twenty two were there because of the quote hereditary rule. Kwan says, there's a watchdog system in place between members of five different families. So if I was caught trying to escaped. Then not just my family members, but all the rest of our four neighboring families are held collectively responsible. Quan was part of a group that was carrying out chemical experiments on political prisoners. They were testing various forms of gases. Again from Quan, the most unforgettable scene I remember was when I watched an entire family being killed. They were put inside the chamber and I saw them all suffocate to death. The last person to die was the youngest son, who was crying for his parents and eventually died. The youngest were children, and

14:37 the oldest ones were in their sixties. They were stripped naked and put into the chamber. Even though they were dying. I saw the parents trying to save their children by giving them mouth to mouth resuscitation. A former prisoner who miraculously survived the North Korean camps lee soon All, testified to the US Senate and also wrote a memoir of her experiences called Eyes of the Tailless Animals. She describes witnessing an experiment in which fifty healthy female prisoners were fed poisoned cabbage leaves. She said it only took twenty minutes for all fifty to die vomiting blood and bleeding annally. Missus Kimashuk was sent to Camp number eighteen a pook tongue at the age of thirteen. Her grandfather escaped allegedly to South Korea, and that was the reason for the relocation of the whole family. She spent their twenty eight years. They would signal us to come over and make us sit down. There was a specific position in which we all were made to sit. We were made to put our hands behind our backs and kneel with our heads raised and our mouths open. It's spit flam into our mouths.

16:00 If we swallowed, they would reward us by not hitting us, But if we gagged even a little bit, they would beat us severely. They were taught to treat us cruelly. They didn't care about human rights get at. As the children got older, their heads got bigger, but they didn't get taller because of their poor diet. Their legs and arms were thin, but their heads. Their heads were so big they didn't have a normal shape. They didn't even look like human beings. Be right back after this break, stay with us. Mister Leon as personal bodyguard to Kim Jong ild for ten years. He later made critical comments against North Korean regime, was arrested in China, sent back to North Korea, tortured and sent to political prison Camp's number fifteen in Yodok. The prisoners were given very little corn, but the cows, on the other hand, ate it freely, and so the cow

17:32 dung always had corn in it the older men. Usually it was only the older men would pick the corn out of the dung and eat it. They had developed such a strong will to live. We were like dogs fighting over scraps. That's what we'd become. Kim Jong ild turned people into beasts. This next clip is of Phil Robertson, the Asia Deputy director of the group Human Rights Watch, built by association in North Korea. Means that if you commit a crime, not only will you be punished, but also three generations of your family will be punished. Your grandparents, your parents, your grandchildren.

18:22 These and other crimes are now being investigated by a UN Commission of Inquiry established by the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. We fully expect that will receive the support of international community in demanding accountability for the crimes that have been perpetrated by the North Korean government against own people. And our last clip is from Joanne Hosaniak, who is the deputy director general of the group Citizens Alliance for North Korean Human Rights. Well, North Korea is a terror state, bases all of its policies on controlling the society, and this control is based on the fear. So that is the most powerful method to really control the whole state, and it really has worked very well for the regime. Otto Warrenbier was not a dumb kid. In fact, quite the opposite was true.

19:30 He was one of the smartest in his class. And if he was going to visit North Korea, I cannot imagine a scenario where he didn't do extensive research on the country, it's history, in its customs. He would have been more than aware of the vast network of concentration camps that existed in the country, and he would have known that any political crime, no matter how seemingly trivial, could very well land him in one of these camps. With this in mind, we have to ask ourselves, is it plausible that Auto warm Beer, a college kid with a bright feature and finance at a renowned college and a loving family who although they were struggling so much, we're doing fairly well financially, would have knowingly risked his very life for used car worth ten thousand dollars. On the basis of these facts alone, I think we can safely come to a conclusion as to whether Otto warm Beer's speech was his own genuine confession or rather a carefully crafted lie written for him by the North Korean government who forced him to perform it as convincingly as possible under the threat of torture and where death. Otto was facing a trial which would occur on March sixteenth of twenty sixteen, two and a half months after his initial arrest, North Korea held a one hour trial in its Supreme Court where they formally convicted Auto of subversion in an attempt to quote impair the unity of its

21:03 people under Articles sixty of its Criminal Code. And that's when Auto was given his sentence, which I'll share with you on the next episode of Tapes from the Dark Side. I'm tz Borden and I've been your host today, and I've decided that for the month of September, fifty percent of all of our Patreon money will go directly to the nonprofit group liberty in North Korea. One of the most important things they're doing is helping to rescue defectors who need immediate assistance in reaching a safe Harbard country such as South Korea. While living in China, they are under your constant threat of being deported back to North Korea where they will be forced to re enter the concentration camps. I'm also going to put a link to their PayPal in the show notes in case you would like to donate directly. According to the Citizens Alliance website, the cost of saving one life is approximately two to three thousand US dollars. We have the ability to literally save people's lives, and if you like to join our Patreon and help support us and this organization that way, you can do that at patreon dot com. Slash Tapes from the Dark Side, the documentary that we featured clips from at the end of this episode was from the group called Human Rights Watch, posted in two and fourteen. The link to that entire video

22:37 will also be in the show notes. Thank you to Augusta Trevororum, whose original music was featured on the show today. Thank you to Carissa Collins, who was the head writer for the season. Thank you to all of our supporters on Patreon. Our newest five dollars members are Tricia Willis, Amanda Alexander, Susie Lane Ward, Aerial Clemer, Emily and Michelle Masher. In Our fifteen dollars Producer tier level members are Christy Reese, Tyler Ernster, Violet Ross, Greg b Angela, m F Santana Savine, Alexis, Kathleen Vanessa Miller, Sherry Sly, Noah Schultz, Shelley Jones, Olivia Schmid, Amber Catlett, Chris Schaumberg, and Gina Oybunco. I'm getting ready to send out a batch of Patreon rewards stickers, enamel pins, mugs, whatever you've got in the tier that you signed up for, So if you want to sneak in there and get in this next round of rewards shipments, right now is the perfect time to sign up. We also have a new surprise coming to Patreon very soon, a new exclusive series. I don't want to say much more about it because there is a little more work that I have to put into it before it's ready. But anyways, if you want to get updates on that, see behind the scenes stuff, and get rewards, sign up today.

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