This is serious business.
Japanese and South Korean citizens, some not even anywhere near the border with North Korea, were snatched by aggressive N. Korean authorities and held, for something like 25 or 30 years, STILL stuck up there after a quarter of a century of appeals to Pyongyang from Tokyo and Seoul. So I doubt there will be any particular special treatment for them, even if they have the Al Gore connections and are Americans. We are not in Kansas anymore. North Korean border guards. They will throw rocks. They will start shooting. They will charge across the border into South Korea to chase a defector. They will bludgeon to death a US soldier trying to remove a stupid tree on neutral soil they say was planted by Kim il Sung himself at the DMZ. One should never get too close. They are extremely irrational and are under direct orders to try to grab a Westerner whom they feel is doing them harm or threatening them in any way.
One wishes them the best.
Megumi Yokota, snatched by North Korean agents, 1977. Still in North Korea, never returned to family (but claimed as "dead"):
