North Korea is notorious for taking visitors prisoner. And famous cases like Otto Warmbier and Merrill Newman have shown the regime’s willingness to use U.S. citizens as political hostages.

But Americans and other Westerners are not the only ones who have found themselves on the bad side of the Kim regime.

From 1967 to 1974, Venezuelan poet Ali Lameda languished in North Korean custody despite being a radical leftist and self-proclaimed ally of Kim Il Sung. 

His seven-year ordeal marked the first time a non-military foreigner was detained in the DPRK after the Korean War. And while Lameda’s case has