How Otto Warmbier's death in 2017 put hard partying North Korean tour groups in spotlight
Alcohol-fuelled trips to the hermit nation under scrutiny after American student’s detention, for the crime of stealing a poster, and subsequent death on June 19, 2017
It is just three days since the death of Otto Warmbier, following the American tourist’s return in a coma from 17 months’ detention in Pyongyang, and the mood in the North Korea-themed DMZ Bar, in Yangshuo, is distinctly subdued.
The backpacker bar, which claims to stay open longer than any other nightspot in the tourist town in southwest China’s Guangxi region and revels in the catchphrase “Get s***faced the North Korean way”, seems anything but raucous as its owner serves drinks to a handful of tourists and expats.
Once festooned with pictures, posters and other Pyongyang-related memorabilia, the DMZ Bar appears to have been stripped back to basics, with only one socialist realist mural on show and a blackboard above the bar offering North Korean beer at 55 yuan (US$8.5) a bottle.
The few inside the bar, owned by Briton Gareth Johnson, include Western tour guides taking time off between escorting parties in and out of North Korea who are now fretful about their future and have to deal with entreaties from anxious parents to come home.
Named for the military acronym of “demilitarised zone”, the DMZ Bar is the unofficial headquarters of Young Pioneer Tours, the travel company that organised the fateful tour to North Korea in January 2016 on which 21-year-old student Warmbier was detained. Over the past fortnight, the company set up in 2008 by Johnson and his Chinese wife, Wendy, has received an avalanche of criticism over its alcohol-fuelled tours as it and the more reputable companies that take non-mainland Chinese tourists into North Korea reassess their position in light of the tragedy.
Young Pioneer offers “budget travel to destinations your mother would rather you stayed away from”, but that boast – still carried on the company’s website at the time of writing – has a hollow ring for the grieving parents of Warmbier, who was arrested at Pyongyang airport for allegedly stealing a propaganda poster from the hotel in which he stayed with Johnson and the tour group.