This past week we witnessed the funeral of twenty-two year old Otto Warmbier who died within days of being returned home from North Korea.
In January 2016 he was arrested as he was about to depart from Pyongyang International Airport for allegedly stealing a propaganda poster from his hotel.
In February 2016, Warmbier read a statement purporting to be a “confession” and was tried and convicted of “a hostile act against the state.”
On March 16, 2016 the University of Virginia college student was sentenced to fifteen years of hard labor.
The Deputy Director of Human Rights Watch, Phil Robertson, called Warmbier’s trial a “kangaroo court.”
One week before Warmbier’s release, North Korea disclosed to his parents that he was in a coma and had been comatose since two months following his imprisonment.
The North Korean government claims that Warmier’s coma resulted from food borne botulism and sleeping pills.
Upon Warmbier’s release, he was flown home to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he was examined by doctors, who found no evidence of botulism. He remained in a persistent vegetative state until his death on June 19.
Warmbier’s parents elected not to have an autopsy performed and have expressed disbelief and outrage at the North Korean government’s explanation of their son’s cause of death and the failure to disclose his condition sooner and provide prompt medical attention.
Medical experts have concluded that an autopsy would have only revealed what was already known, that he suffered extensive brain damage and any evidence of assault or other trauma would have long disappeared.
North Korea, for its part, contends that it is the victim of a “smear campaign” and “make firm determination that humanitarian and benevolence for the enemy are a taboo and we should further sharpen the blade of law.”
In other words, expect more of the same.
Senator John McCain accused the North Korean government of murdering Warmbier and declared that if Americans were “stupid” enough to travel to North Korea then they ought to be required to sign a form acknowledging the risk of arrest, imprisonment and even death and absolving the U.S. Government of responsibility for the consequences.
While McCain’s opinion seems a bit harsh, considering how close it followed Warmbier’s death, he does have a point.
Since 1996, sixteen Americans have been arrested and imprisoned by the North Korean government and three remain confined along with a Canadian citizen.
The trumped up charges are usually bizarre in nature. Merrill Newman traveled to North Korea at the age of eighty-five and was detained because of his military service in the Korean War. He was released after forty-two days. Poor Otto Warmbier was not so fortunate.
McCain’s observation does raise a number of questions.
Knowing that the North Korean regime is brutal to the point of being murderous, why would any thinking American risk the kind of imprisonment, injury or death that could result from visiting North Korea?
Why hasn’t the U.S. government considered banning travel by Americans to North Korea?
For almost fifty years, the United States Government banned American travel to Cuba. Why, in the wake of the likely murder of a twenty-two year-old American college student following a kangaroo court trial, a similar ban wouldn’t be imposed leaves me somewhat baffled.
Indeed, the way in which The United States has dealt with other North Korean threats in contrast with other countries is likewise perplexing.
There is no secret that North Korea has nuclear weapons. We have watched, complained, negotiated and otherwise tried unsuccessfully to stop that progress, to no avail for at least a decade.
We are now waiting with understandable trepidation for them to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile that might reach our shores.
Is there any hue and cry from Washington about these developments?
Has there been any action taken, overtly or covertly, by the United States, independently or with others, to stop this progress.
The answer appears to be no.
Instead, while all this has been transpiring, this Administration has been beating its breast, denouncing the Iran nuclear treaty entered into by the Obama Administration.
It does so, despite the fact that there is no evidence that the Iranians have not fulfilled their part of the Agreement not to further produce nuclear grade material.
To hear Trump and other Republican leaders excoriate a deal that the Iranians are living up to, while remaining silent and inactive in the face of the North Korean barbarity, leads one to wonder what planet they are living on.
If there is anything positive that might come out of Otto Warmbier’s death, it might be that the government is prodded to produce a coherent strategy to deal with a barbaric regime that threatens us with imminent nuclear disaster.
Perhaps the Administration could perceive it as just as great a real and present danger as…………………….Obamacare.