Wannabe Snowden Fake Gets Arrested In North Korea

Written by: Tiobe

A 24 year-old California man, Matthew Miller, will serve six years with labor in North Korea, according to a Sept. 14 North Korea Supreme Court ruling. Miler waived his right to a lawyer, and the court denied him any requests for appeal.

Bakersfield native Miller allegedly tore up his visa upon entering North Korea and requested asylum, claiming he had in his possession intelligence about the United States military. 

“He perpetrated the above-said acts in the hope of becoming a ‘world famous guy’ and the ‘second Snowden’ through intentional hooliganism,” said the Korean Central News Agency in a statement. “The results of the investigation made it clear that he did so not because of a simple lack of understanding and psychopathology, but deliberately perpetrated such criminal acts for the purpose of directly going to prison.”

North Korea has also detained American Jeffrey Fowle, arrested last May for leaving a Bible behind in a rest stop, and Kenneth Bae, arrested in 2012 and sentenced to 15 years imprisonment for “hostile acts.” Fowle still has yet to have a trial.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry recently criticized North Korea for its prison camps, denouncing the crimes of that nation to the United Nations on Sept. 23, crimes he says equate to genocide.

“We say to the North Korean government, all of us here today, you should close those camps, you should shut this evil system down,” said Secretary Kerry to the U.N.. “We simply cannot be blind to these egregious affronts to human nature and we cannot accept it. Silence would be the greatest abuse of all.”

That sentiment may be genuine, but Miller says so far, Washington has been giving him the cold shoulder. 

““I’ve written a letter to my president with no reply,” said Miller in a CNN interview. “For this reason, I am disappointed in my government.”

The U.S. government offered to send an envoy to North Korea to negotiate the release of the imprisoned Americans, but so far North Korea has refused these efforts.

Similar efforts historically have not always been unsuccessful; in 2010, former President Jimmy Carter traveled as a private citizen to North Korea to negotiate the release of English teacher Aijalon Gomes and was successful in that endeavor.

Miller’s fate, along with those of other Americans imprisoned in North Korea, remain uncertain, as Kim Jong-un, Supreme Ruler of North Korea, has not yet met with any world leaders, for any reason.

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Sources:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/14/north-korea-matthew-miller-sentence-us-hard-labour

http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-north-korea-trial-matthew-miller-20140913-story.html

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/23/us-usa-northkorea-abuses-idUSKCN0HI1KE20140923

http://www.techworm.net/2014/09/snowden-fake-gets-arrested-in-north-korea.html