Mail.comPYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — North Korea on Sunday presented to the media an American man who says he illegally crossed into the country but has not been put into custody and is seeking asylum in Venezuela.
Arturo Pierre Martinez, 29, of El Paso, Texas, said he entered North Korea by crossing the river border with China. Details of how and when he got into the country were not immediately clear. In his comments to reporters, Martinez strongly criticized the U.S. for alleged human rights violations.
Martinez’s mother, Patricia Eugenia Martinez of El Paso, told CNN that her son was bipolar and earlier had tried to enter North Korea by swimming across a river, but was stopped and shipped back to the United States, where he was placed in a California psychiatric hospital.
“Then he got out,” she told the network. “He is very smart and he got the court to let him out, and instead of coming home to us he bought a ticket and left for China. He took out a payday loan online and left for China.”
She said the U.S. Embassy in Beijing was looking for him. Martinez made his comments at the People’s Palace of Culture, which North Korean authorities have used in recent years for press conferences where they present North Korean defectors who have returned to North Korea, or on at least one occasion, a South Korean citizen who was detained in North Korea. It is also used for signing ceremonies between North Korea and other countries.
His comments came amid North Korea’s own loud protests of a resolution in the United Nations that could open the door for its leaders to face charges of crimes against humanity for human rights violations, raising questions of whether Martinez was trotted out to the media for propaganda purposes.
North Korea recently released three Americans — two who had entered the country on tourist visas and Kenneth Bae, a Korean-American missionary who had been convicted of “anti-state” crimes.
How the F**K do these Americans keep “illegally” crossing into North Korea all the time? Especially when they know that the consequences of it all and how North Korea hates America with a passion. I just don’t get it. I mean you’d have to literally be hiding under a rock to not know this or literally have to intentionally cross into North Korea and get caught.
“Martinez’s mother, Patricia Eugenia Martinez of El Paso, told CNN that her son was bipolar and earlier had tried to enter North Korea by swimming across a river, but was stopped and shipped back to the United States, where he was placed in a California psychiatric hospital.
“Then he got out,” she told the network. “He is very smart and he got the court to let him out, and instead of coming home to us he bought a ticket and left for China. He took out a payday loan online and left for China.””
Unfrigginbelievable….. Smart or just a CIA manipulated agent? The guy’s a dumbass. LEAVE HIM THERE!! I’m sick of stupid people. I think the psychiatric wards in the US are nothing more than CIA undercover debriefing wards because everyone who comes back from North Korea, Rodman included, seem to wind up there immediately upon returning to the US and no one finds this strange or a coincidence. And this guy after being put there, mysteriously gets released, manages to get an online loan (???), gets a visa into China with that background (yea right) and heads back to North Korea.
Yea right, tell me another one. He’s got government agent written all over him.
“Martinez strongly criticized the U.S. for alleged human rights violations.”
That alone would send his popularity soaring (with the N Korean govt., anyway) in that sorry country.
But he’s right about the abuses.