One word - Idiot!

No sympathy from me. First-class idiot Aijalon Mahli Gomes, 30, an American English teacher in South Korea and devout evangelical Christian who illegally entered DPR Korea January this year, has attempted suicide, as reported by Pyongyang and other world news sources. The official Korean news agency claimed Gomes attempted suicide 'out of a sense of frustration and guilt'. Oh, how sad, and un-Christian of him. Then again, he could be trying to kill himself to get to God quicker. You just never know how screwed up these Evangelicals can be.

So why don't I have sympathy for this guy? Many reasons, and it has nothing to do with his obscure religious name (Aijalon is a corruption of 'Ayalon', a place in Israel mentioned in the Bible, while Mahli is the name of a minor Biblical figure). First of all, whenever anyone wonders across a border not at an authorised crossing, don't expect the authorities in any country to be waiting there with lemonade and biscuits. He should have asked a poor Mexican trying to wonder across the border into his home country without prior approval - not a pleasant experience whether you get caught or not. Wondering into a country like DPR Korea can only expect very serious consequences.

Gomes is also another victim of the crazy ideology of evangelical Christianity, a cult which has gripped South Korea, like elsewhere. Even though Gomes is being portrayed as some activist trying to highlight human rights abuses in DPR Korea, the real reason why he and Robert Park before him illegally entered DPR Korea was to spread their extreme and self-righteous interpretation of the word of God. The naivety of such an act really calls Gomes' judgement into question, and whether he was actually put to this by his religious leaders. This is just one of the many acts that South Korean evangelicals have been doing lately that have threatened the safety of their blind and rather myopic followers. They were responsible for sending 22 naive young Koreans on Christian missionary work to Islamic Afghanistan in 2007, later to be kidnapped by the Taliban. The same cults are now spearheading the campaign against DPR Korea with the hope that with its collapse, they will have 23 million faithless souls to convert. Many of the documentaries and books providing a rather extreme and, at times, inconsistent view of contemporary North Korea have been written and financed by these evangelical groups, pushing their thinly veiled agenda. Much of what they have to say about North Korea is often exaggerated and contradictory - according to their reports, North Koreans spend a lot of their time watching South Korean DVDs, but on the same token, they also supposedly don't have money, food or electricity. Adding two and two together, how can they watch all those DVDs then? The picture of Gomes above, which seems to be the only shot of him used throughout the media (usually cropped), is of him at an anti-DPRK rally in South Korea.

Regarding Gomes' suicide attempt due to frustration, well, how many undocumented cases of suicide happen with refugees and asylum seekers in detention centres (i.e. jails) in countries like the USA and Australia have there been? The only difference here is that the refugee or asylum seeker entered in the country in which asylum is sought on a legal basis (contrary to tabloid media parlance) after fleeing from war, famine or extreme poverty. Gomes has none of that to go by, but he is the one being perceived as the 'victim' here.

A step back needs to be made here. Gomes broke the law of all countries here. If he were to be let free, then this would indicate that borders should mean nothing to the countries championing his release, opening a legal precedence for cross-border crime. However, we know that the USA would not look kindly to Muslim missionaries walking into the USA from Canada. So why expect DPR Korea to be compassionate then? In the end, hypocrisy, yet again, wins. Now, what was happening in the US with 10 Russian spies then...?