Aijalon Mahli Gomes, 30, was sentenced, by North Korea, to eight years of hard labor and commanded him to pay $700,000 as a fine for illegally crossing into North Korea. Gomes, who had been teaching English in South Korea, was the fourth American to be arrested by North Korea for illegal crossing in less than a year. Journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee were held in North Korea for five months before being released last August, and activist Robert Park was expelled after crossing sometime around Christmas. At Pyongyang's Central Court, Gomes admited his wrongdoing for illegally crossing. Nonetheless, he was sentenced to eight years of hard labor and was fined 70 million North Korean won. North Korea's official exchange rate is 100 won to the U.S. dollar. It was foggy as to why Gomes risked going into communist North Korea illegally. Gomes, being a devoted Christian, attended rallies in Seoul in support of Park. Park purposely went into North Korea in December to call attention to the nation's rights record. A Seoul-based activist close to Gomes, said Gomes may have been inspired by Park to make a similar trip.
Although it was expected for those people to be punished for illegally crossing, I really admire how strong their beliefs were and how brave they were to do such a thing. A couple from my church are now spending their second year in China teaching English. I really admire them being able to step out of their comfort zone to a complete foreign country where there are ridiculous restrictions. When my church wants to send letters to them, we are not allowed to have anything like bible verses, "God Bless you...", or any phrases of that sort because the Chinese government enforces mail to be looked through.
It is ridiculous how harsh North Korean restrictions are and how ruthless their punishments are for such a petty crime.
-Emily Niemann
Thursday, April 8, 2010
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5 comments:
I agree with Emily that the North Korea punishments are ridiculous. Gomes shouldn't have been sentenced to eight years of hard labor and fined $700,000. Gomes should've been punished with a small fine.
This is an extremely ridiculous punishment. Even though people have no rights in North Korea, I still believe that everyone at least deserve the basic rights regardless of a country's rules and regulations.
It's not exactly "petty". I mean when national security calls for taking into account immigrants that isn't something you can just disregard. Instead of just fining him and placing him in jail they should do a background check and find out what he was up to. Of course, they probably are doing that to a certain extent. Even if they do find nothing wrong, I doubt they would let him go. ;/ They are trying to possibly scare other people from illegally crossing.
How unfortunate for this 30 year old fellow. I agree it is very ridiculous that he waas given all this punishment for such a small thing. However, he should have known since this is NOrth Korea. Ther ahve already been previous instances recently where this has happened, yet he still crossed the border. I think it is partly his fault for gettin himself into this mess.
wow, i had no idea the regulations were so strict. i do find the punishment for Gomes to be quite exessive, but i do agree with lily when she mentions that national security must account for immigrants and that, instead of just placing in him in jail, they should have figured out WHY he had crossed the border anyway. if it was a non threatening accident, then what's the harm?
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