Australian Student Claims He was “Kidnapped” By North Korean Secret Police
The Australian student who was detained in North Korea last year is now telling his story on what happened to him:
An Australian student who was briefly detained in North Korea last year over spy charges said he had been kidnapped by secret police and forced to make a false confession, according to an article written by him and seen by Reuters on Wednesday.
Alek Sigley was held for nine days from June 25 while studying for a postgraduate degree in modern Korean literature at the prestigious Kim Il-sung University in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital.
He was expelled from the country after Swedish officials helped broker his release.
North Korean state media KCNA said he had admitted his “spying acts” including passing data and photos he collected by utilizing his status as a foreign student to “anti-state” media outlets.
Beyond denying that he was a spy and saying he was sad to have lost access to North Korea, Sigley has not previously publicized details of his detention.
In his first-hand account carried by a South Korea magazine, Sigley said that what appeared to be agents from the Stasi-like State Security Department, known as bowibu, “kidnapped” him from his dorm at the university.
“I was innocent but they filed false charges against me,” he wrote, without elaborating.
“They endlessly tried to teach me some kind of lessons by forcing me to make a written confession which was a concoction of fabricated evidence and crimes and illogical legal reasonings.”
Reuters
You can read more at the link, but at least he wasn’t tortured and is alive to tell about what happened unlike other former detainees in North Korea.
Like I have always said, people should not be visiting or investing in North Korea and helping to fund the Kim regime. Mr. Sigley has unfortunately found this out the hard way.
There is a very high degree of probability that Sigley is guilty of everything the Norks accused him of. Tour operators, religious missionaries, and other entities have been covertly spying on NK for years. They are also the ones who have smuggled in USB memory sticks with South Korean TV shows and Western movies. Sigley had better keep a low profile and keep his mouth shut. Remember what happened to Fatty’s younger brother in Indonesia (or was it Malaysia??).
Tim, it’s less likely the kid was an actual spy than that he was guilty of aharing photos that irritated some low- to mid-level Party member.
@setnaffa – I don’t think the kid was like an official spy for any government agency. I was simply saying that people like that with no real knowledge of the depth of deception and depravity of NK are naive and oblivious to the consequences of their actions.
I agree completely. And if the dude had any actualnidea of what North Korea had been up to, he would not have considered anythingbabout the country “prestigious.”
@TCT: The event happened in Malaysia.
@JH – Thanks for the clarification. I always get those two countries mixed up for some reason.