Say what you will about the effectiveness of sanctions and the current state of American foreign policy, United States citizens shouldn’t undertake expressly illegal overt acts on enemy soil to assist hostile governments in undermining that foreign policy—regardless as to whether or not the information they share is already known by that hostile government—without at least expecting to attract unwanted attention from their own government.

We live in a country that has the rule of law, you can't just arbitrarily use a vague characterization of a country being "hostile" to abridge the rights of someone. I would be alright with this if the us had a formal declaration of war with north Korea, but it doesn't.

As mentioned earlier in the thread, the US is technically still at war with North Korea. If there were to be one and only one country on the face of the planet that you should not be giving any kind of information or money to as a US citizen, it is North Korea.

This isn't vague or arbitrary. The sanctions against NK are very specific, and lengthy.

> US is technically still at war with North Korea

No we are not. The constitution specifically says that only congress can declare war, and congress has made no such declaration.

So we were never at war with Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Vietnam. Sweet. I guess we're still on our perfect win streak yeah?

Edit: I feel bad about being facetious, but I feel like the point is relevant. The US, in a practical sense, does not need congress to ok war. Pointing that out as a reason to doubt the basis for strict treatment of North Korea is like pointing out the speed-limit is 55 when someone travelling 56 gets T-boned.

Hm. There seems to be a correlation between declaring war and winning them.

This is factually true and irrelevant. War is no longer declared; even when taking on actions that normally require war

> No we are not. The constitution specifically says that only congress can declare war, and congress has made no such declaration.

Do note that the US never declared war on Iraq, and that did not stopped it from fighting two wars that were very real, both of which with the support of an international coalition.

The US hasn't formally declared war on anyone since World War 2. Not Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korea, nor any of the many smaller conflicts we've fought.

However, the United Nations did declare war on North Korea, with US support, and the US is the major participant in that war; and no peace treaty was ever signed, merely a cease fire.

that's exactly correct. If we're going to start abridging freedoms (which I concede may be necessary in exigencies), we'd better get a congressional vote on it.

I'm afraid you're just stating how you'd prefer things to be instead of discussing (and considering) how things actually are.

The truth of the matter is that declarations of war are patently irrelevant regarding whether a nation is deemed hostile or not.

Yes, of course. This whole thread is about how we would prefer things to be, it's about the ethics of whether or not someone should have been arrested. He was arrested. That is the "truth of the matter".

Should giving technical assistance to a sanctioned regime be treated as protected speech? Is that the right that was abridged here? If Virgil Griffith goes to trial, I imagine we will eventually see whether the Supreme Court considers what he did to be protected speech, or not. Personally, I don’t think they would even hear his case if he were to appeal on those grounds.

You write as if Congress has not weighed in on this matter, simply because it has not declared war on North Korea. In fact, current North Korean sanctions were codified and authorized by Congress in the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act of 2016, which expanded upon the sanctions regime that had already been in place. Virgil Griffith’s alleged acts are not illegal because of a vague characterization of North Korea as being “hostile”, but because Congress explicitly made it illegal to travel to North Korea to give technical advice.

> We live in a country that has the rule of law, you can't just arbitrarily use a vague characterization of a country being "hostile" to abridge the rights of someone.

There is no ambiguity in the classification of North Korea as a hostile regime. Not only there is the fact that the Korean war never ended with a peace treaty an only had an armistice, there is also the hostile and recently degrading relationship that in 2020 escalated to the total elimination of official communication lines between north and south Korea.

There is indeed no ambiguity with Korea, but there is a worrying spectrum of hostility - from Russia to china to iran. I detest all of those regimes, but we absolutely must be careful about using a vague characterization as a pretense for the our regime to take arbitrary and unjust actions against us citizens that are have family or are doing legitimate businesses there.

> but we absolutely must be careful about using a vague characterization

I should point out that there is nothing vague about sactions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_against_North_Korea

If a country like the US imposes sanctions on a country which includes, quite prominently, restrictions on investment and financial activities, and afterwards you go out of your way to provide assistance on how to circumvent those restrictions on investment and financial activities... Where's the surprise that your assistance gets you in jail?

> In 2019 our own President went there to discuss peace.

From thereon the relation between north Korea and south Korea/US degraded so badly that official communication lines between north and south Korea were officially severed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea%E2%80%93South_Kore...