Some of them have become stars, too, in North Korea, where the international conversation is shut out. “What’s remarkable about it is that through this act, although it’s a very dangerous one and has very serious consequences, they’re catapulted from relative unknowns into international celebrities of a sort that everyone is talking about,” Scott said. Since he fled, the US has docked nuclear-armed and -powered submarines in South Korea, while North Korea has conducted missile tests.īelow the toplines, some of the coverage of King has also pointed to a fascinating, largely forgotten chapter of the historical record-namely, the tales of four US soldiers who fled to North Korea in the years after the end of the Korean War (the seventieth anniversary of which falls this week), and how the North Korean regime drafted them into propaganda campaigns, including literature and movies aimed variously at other potential defectors and North Korean citizens.Īs Erik Scott, a historian who wrote a book about Cold War-era defectors, told NPR last week, the word “defection” tends to connote a principled ideological choice but the motivations for it are often personal-again, we don’t yet know why King fled to North Korea, but the troubles he left behind are strikingly similar to those of some of his forebears. We know only that his fate has become entangled in growing tensions on the Korean peninsula. As a result, we don’t know why King defected, or if that’s even the right word to describe his crossing. In the days that followed, North Korean officials and their state media apparatus stayed publicly silent, and the Biden administration said it was trying to determine King’s status yesterday, an official with the United Nations Command-a US-led body that oversees the southern side of the DMZ and communicates with North Korea in the absence of diplomatic relations between that country and the US- said that conversations over King had begun, but that he couldn’t tell the press any more than that. No one outside of that country seemed to know exactly what happened to King next. Soon, he was in North Korea and out of sight. The eyewitness thought he was recording a prank for TikTok, but King didn’t stop. When he got there, he bought a souvenir hat, according to one eyewitness, then, suddenly, sprinted toward the border. King had been stationed in the latter country, where he was recently jailed for assault US military personnel subsequently escorted him to the airport to fly back to Fort Bliss, in Texas, for further disciplinary measures, but King left the airport and went to the DMZ instead. New York, Los Angeles and Chicago all maintain and regularly update lists of what is and is not safe to eat - including cases where a type of fish caught in one body of water is unsafe as opposed to one caught elsewhere.Last week, Travis King, a US Army private, signed up for a tourist trip to the Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ, on the border of North and South Korea. If you’re an urban dweller who’s been considering fishing with an eye towards consuming what you’ve caught, there are plenty of resources online to make sure your dining plans are safe. (The column’s title? OnlyFins.) Among the topics of conversation - the ways in which fishing can alleviate stress (always a plus) and the search for the best place to catch striped bass. That’s one of the big takeaways from a recent article in The New Yorker that found Eric Lach interviewing Esther Wang, who writes a regular column for Hell Gate about fishing in New York City. But evidently, a growing number of residents of New York - and other big cities - are seeking out rods and reels and tapping into their inner Norman MacLean. Years ago, I traveled to the Brooklyn waterfront, boarded a boat and ventured out into New York Harbor with friends to see what we could catch it’s worth mentioning here that we did this reasonably far from dry land. When you think of fishing in a major city, your expectations might involve having to leave that city to reel in a fish of any relevant size.
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