Also, the head of the tour company involved looks like a total POS. Some are speculating that Otto was just the scapegoat for other crazy stuff that went down that same night.
"On New Year’s Eve, the tour group allegedly went out drunkenly in Kim Il-sung Square in Pyongyang and were somehow able to interact directly with North Koreans. That’s when shyt hit the fan.
Danny Gratton, a Brit in his mid-forties, “takes a balloon on a string from some kid, waves the balloon up and down, and, like the Pied Piper, a bunch of North Koreans start following him,” says [one source], who says he was the only foreigner who joined along. The two men, engaging with the North Koreans, happy and laughing, strolled around the area for roughly half an hour.
The guy telling this story says he went back to the hotel after a little bit, because, you know, you don’t really want to be leading a whole bunch of North Koreans around Pyongyang after dark when you’re trashed. But Danny kept walking, and eventually disappeared with the small army he had gathered. According to the
Politico story, the North Korean minders were really freaked out and had no idea where he was, while the Westerners (including Warmbier) were reportedly too drunk to realize what was going on. The missing Brit turned up on his own the next morning, but
Politico says Danny’s actions somewhat concur with the timeframe during which Otto was supposed to have stolen the banner."
Some Crazy Drunken Stuff Happened On Otto Warmbier’s Fateful North Korea Trip
Here is some more information about them:
"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.
While Warmbier’s family and US officials negotiated behind the scenes for the student’s release, Johnson carried on as before, declining to comment directly on the case and revelling in his company’s rebellious image. In a podcast interview broadcast last summer, Johnson described how, on one visit to North Korea, he broke his ankle after stepping off a moving train while drunk on soju, a potent Korean liquor.
In an interview with
Vice magazine published last July, Johnson said he formed Young Pioneer in 2008 after getting drunk with a North Korean official “in charge of stuff” and claimed his company was now the “second biggest player in North Korea tourism”. He said he was unable to discuss Warmbier’s case but, in a remark that appeared to shift the blame towards the American student, said, “If I bring guests that are respectful, willing to listen, willing to interact with people, North Koreans will see that we are normal people as well.”
Warmbier’s death unleashed a torrent of troubling accounts from former customers.Briton Adam Pitt, who visited North Korea with Young Pioneer in 2013, said in an interview he believed Johnson put his tour group in danger: “Gareth was pretty much blind drunk the whole time we were in the country,” he recalled, describing Johnson drinking so heavily on the train journey from Pyongyang back to Dandong, in China, that by the time they reached the border crossing, he was “almost unable to stand and barely understandable when he did speak”.
There then followed a farcical encounter with agitated border guards checking tourists’ cameras for illicitly taken pictures while Johnson tried to bribe them with wads of bank notes. At one point, guards appeared to signal for the entire tour party to get off the train before the situation was defused by Johnson giving a bigger bribe, Pitt claimed. Young Pioneer later disputed his account.
Johnson insists that he stayed behind in North Korea for days to find out more about Warmbier’s detention. However, his expressions of concern were undermined by a picture from North Korea posted on his Instagram account on January 11, 2016, nine days after Warmbier’s arrest, showing him fondly clutching a bottle of liquor.
And an Instagram post on Johnson's account dated January 10, 2016, only eight days after Warmbier had been detained, shows a Caucasian man, though it's not clear who, standing in a train station while not wearing any pants. The photograph is described with the hashtag, #NorthKorea.
An expat acquaintance who met Johnson in the Philippines says, “Gareth is a typical loud, drunken Brit who doesn’t seem to take anything very seriously. He was in the Philippines soon after Warmbier was jailed and the impression I got was that he didn’t give a damn. There’s only one person on planet Earth that Gareth Johnson gives a damn about and that’s Gareth Johnson. His businesses exist for his lifestyle, not the other way around.”"
North Korean tour groups in spotlight after Otto Warmbier's death in 2017
Former YPT clients, who are now stepping forward after Warmbier’s passing, reveal how the founder and its company are doing business.
Since the company’s inception in 2008, it has developed a party culture of being rowdy, rude, and drunk. This culture “trickles down” to YPT guests, according to Alex Hoban.
Earlier this week, Alex Hoban spoke about his previous experiences with YPT in
The Guardian.
“Young Pioneer Tours has developed a reputation for gungho and unruly alcohol-fueled youths, propagating an unreal idea of North Korea where safety is an afterthought,” he said.
YPT’s website and
Instagram even dismisses the rules. The words “no rules apply on this tour” shows YPT’s cocky attitude to North Korea’s conservative regulations.
Last year, Johnson told
Vice that soju is the best weapon to make friends with North Koreans. Bribes and booze — this is how Johnson built the “excellent relations” he boasts about on his website.
