N. Korea’s torture has likely advanced

Everyone I have spoken with about Otto Warmbier and his condition upon release from a North Korean prison has the same comment: “What could they have done to him?”

After the truce was signed ending the Korean “police action,” Americans were shocked that 21 American prisoners of war refused to be repatriated to the United States. Of all the studies of this firsttime phenomena, the one by Eugene Kinkead in his book, “In Every War but One,” explained the possibilities best.

The North Koreans, assisted by their Chinese allies, practiced various forms of torture and brainwashing on American prisoners. One of the first practices upon arriving at a prison camp was to separate the soldiers according to rank; this removed any sign of the difference in rank. It also destroyed any form of discipline that the higher ranks might have in aiding the prisoners in supporting each other and allowing more to survive the hardships to come. This did not work among British soldiers, since they insisted on maintaining the “chain of command” by which the