An Australian graduate student arrested for spying and expelled from North Korea last year said that he was threatened with a firing-squad execution and told not even US President Donald Trump could save his “sorry arse.”
Among the crimes Alek Sigley was accused of committing was posting a picture of a toy tank on Instagram, which his interrogators told him was military espionage.
Sigley, 30, was studying for a master’s degree in Korean literature at Kim Il Sung University in Pyongyang when he went missing in June last year, sparking alarm.
A fluent speaker of Korean, he had written articles for several publications and posted apolitical content on social media about everyday life in one of the world’s most secretive nations.
He was detained at the university and taken to an interrogation facility in a Mercedes-Benz with a black plastic bag covering its license plate.
A North Korean man “with a crazed expression and bulging, bloodshot eyes” began screaming at him, Sigley wrote in a column published by the Guardian on Wednesday.
“You son of a bitch,” he was told in an expletive-laden rant.
“Coming into our country and committing all these crimes. You think Trump or [US Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo will save your sorry arse?” Sigley recalled him saying.
Sigley was interrogated “in a room completely cut off from the outside world,” with no sense of time as the lights were kept on permanently and there was no clock.
“Every day was spent writing forced confessions of my ‘crimes,’ which became only more fanciful as time went on,” Sigley wrote.
If he denied the allegations,” they began yelling at me, reminding me that I could face execution by firing squad if I didn’t carry out my ‘reflection’ and do it ‘sincerely,’” he wrote.
One of his offenses, he was told, was posting on Instagram a picture of a toy North Korean tank inscribed with the slogan “Let’s exterminate US imperialists, the eternal enemy of the Korean people.”
“That’s military espionage,” the interrogator said.
Australia has no diplomatic representation in Pyongyang and when Sigley was detained Canberra turned to Sweden, which has an embassy and a history of acting as a diplomatic intermediary.
Stockholm sent an envoy and Sigley was released after nine days in detention — a much shorter period than some foreigners — with Pyongyang saying he was freed on grounds of “humanitarian forbearance.”
Sigley was forced to read out a “letter of apology” video dictated by his captors before being released, he wrote.
Sigley was already familiar with North Korea, organizing tours to the nation and marrying his Japanese wife there in 2018.
“North Korea is one of the world’s most xenophobic societies, but this xenophobia comes from the state, not the people,” he wrote.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not