It’s not hard to summon sympathy for poor Merrill Newman (pictured far right), the 85-year-old California man currently being held against his will by North Korea’s nuke-happy regime. Newman was a member of a charter tour group visiting the modern day hermit kingdom until he was pulled off a plane on Oct. 26 just as he and the rest of his group were about to fly home. Newman has been in North Korean custody ever since and recently appeared on North Korean television reading an apology for his activities during the Korean War.
Newman’s scripted apology mentioned that he’d “committed indelible offensive acts” against the regime and “killed so many civilians” during his wartime activities. Newman spent the war as an advisor to an American-backed unit of partisans that operated behind North Korean lines, doing everything from raiding military bases to robbing banks, although Newman himself never crossed the border into North Korea. Prior to his trip, Newman had told friends he intended to look up surviving members of his unit or their relatives still living in the country. Newman also reportedly asked the tour guides if they could help him locate these individuals.
Newman’s big mistake appears to have been his belief that looking up old war buddies wouldn’t be a big deal for the North Korean regime. But that would assume the regime thought in a rational manner, and history has repeatedly demonstrated otherwise. Besides, the Korean War is technically still ongoing. The opposing sides agreed to a ceasefire in July 1953 but no official permanent cessation of hostilities document followed. So in North Korea’s eyes, they just caught themselves an asymmetrical warfare specialist looking to ferment internal strife… again.
For online gambling industry types, Newman’s plight bears echoes of former BetOnSports CEO David Carruthers (on the left in the above picture), who was pulled off a plane in Houston in 2006 by American authorities who hadn’t forgiven him for offering online wagering services to US punters. Like Newman, Carruthers was the victim of a country whose legal mindset often appears stuck in the past, unwilling or unable to adapt to changing realities. One can only hope Newman’s time in foreign detention is less than the five long years Carruthers spent in either house arrest (actually a St. Louis hotel) or federal prison. On the plus side, North Korean hospitality is reportedly better than the standard of room service in Missouri, or so we’ve been told.
