Michael Spavor still in captivity

The Korea Times

The Korea Times

Opinion

Sat, December 9, 2023 | 17:14

Guest Column

Michael Spavor still in captivity

Posted : 2019-05-14 17:34

Updated : 2019-07-15 11:41

Michael Spavor, right, poses with a North Korean in front of Kumsusan Palace of the Sun in Pyongyang, North Korea, Aug. 15, 2010. / Korea Times photo by Jon Dunbar

By Jon Dunbar

I dreamt I met my friend Michael again. He showed up in his silver van, same as I remembered from when he lived in Seoul 10 years ago. Back in those days, I knew him as an employee at the Seoul Tourism Organization (STO) and a council member of the Royal Asiatic Society Korea Branch (RASKB).

In my dream, we were going to drive to Alberta, our home province in Canada. He didn't understand how we would get there despite my assurances, and he stressed over it, a very uncharacteristically un-Michael reaction, I can say after having followed him to North Korea twice.

I began to realize this was a dream. The real Michael Spavor is still in custody in China. In the time I had left as the dream faded, I told him he was in our thoughts and his story was well known. He even got a mention on "This Hour Has 22 Minutes," a popular news satire show on CBC.

In real life, it has been over five months that he has been in Chinese captivity now. He is just an innocent bystander taken captive apparently in retaliation for the Canadian government arresting Meng Wengzhou, a Huawei executive accused by the U.S. of lying to investors about her company's violations of sanctions on Iran.

China reciprocally accused Michael of endangering Chinese national security, even though his activities were focused almost entirely on cultural exchanges with North Korea through Paektu Cultural Exchange, a small company he ran out of a border city in China.

It was just last September that I joined him in the North, roughly the same days President Moon Jae-in was up there. I learned through meeting his North Korean business partners that they had given him the affectionate nickname "Manbok."

A friend confirms a picture of him hangs in the International Friendship Exhibition, a palace in North Pyongan Province that displays gifts given to North Korea's leaders. As Michael was with Dennis Rodman on two of his three visits, a group photo of them accompanies a signed basketball given by Rodman.

He has been tightlipped about his ties with North Korea and makes no comment on its humanitarian problems, because to maintain a relationship with the country you just have to. But he has given very fascinating lectures at the RASKB on return visits to Seoul, revealing the importance of what he's done and seen.

Last I saw him was late on my last night in Pyongyang, when I left him with a random assortment of other Westerners in the Yanggakdo Hotel lobby brewpub.

He was supposed to come to Seoul in December and check in at an RASKB lecture on Dec. 11, but Chinese security agents picked him up apparently while in transit to South Korea the day before.

His family has been able to send messages to him. I always wonder what he hears about the outside world, and how much actually gets through. Does he know Michael Kovrig is also in custody, and that other Canadians have been sentenced to death there on drug charges? Does he know he can vote in Canada again? How much has he heard about Canada-China relations these days, and what are his captors telling him?

I've heard he doesn't get to go outside at the detention center where he is being held, and he is subject to bright lights all the time. I've also heard there are Chinese language study books available to him, and knowing Michael he requested them.

I suspect he is using the time to study up on Chinese; he is just that kind of guy, and I am fully confident that if anyone can get through captivity in China, he will survive and thrive because of that spirit. Nobody is more relaxed than Michael, or more apolitical.

For his friends in South Korea, we are keeping him in our minds, both actively and through subtler reminders like my recent dream. Christmas was difficult for me, as I spent Christmas 2009 together with him early in our friendship.

Friends of Michael held a gathering in his honor last month at a makgeolli bar he was known to frequent during his time in the South. The goal was to keep the conversation about him going, continue raising funds to support him upon his release to move on with life, and to show how his friends never stopped thinking about him during his time in captivity.

I believe we'll keep holding these meetings until one final one where he arrives as the guest of honor, and he can finally have that long overdue drink he promised us back in December.

Jon Dunbar (jdunbar@koreatimes.co.kr) is a copyeditor for The Korea Times.

byb@koreatimes.co.kr