Uh oh.
North Korea is going to conduct an “investigation” of those fishermen who drifted into North Korean waters. In these circumstances, it doesn’t seem likely that their stay in the North will be of ordinary duration. Kim Jong Il is in the mood for holding hostages.
North Korea was removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008. Discuss away.
Biggest foreign policy blunder ever. I have no idea how they could not be sponsors of terror considering the human rights issue…
It’s OK to terrorize your own nation’s citizens, you become an official state sponsor only when perpetrating deliberate acts of terror in other countries.
The South Korean fisherman were captured in North Korean territory, so it is still a matter of trespassing (not terror) no matter how long they’re detained.
Human rights is a different issue from terrorism. If we were going to label every country that inflicts human rights abuses on their own citizens as “state sponsors of terrorism” then China (a member of the UN Security Council) would be in deep doo-doo.
When someone is detained beyond what is reasonably necessary and justified, and when the person’s release is linked to some kind of monetary, political, or diplomatic demand, it still fits within section 2331’s definition of terrorism.
Perhaps, but whose definition of “reasonably” are we to use? Unfortunately it’s always open to interpretation. That’s why we keep hearing the Guantanamo analogies from bleeding heart liberals. I personally don’t like the Guantanamo analogies, but folks are always going to argue about the length of detention. There is no consistency on the release of previous South Korean fishing crews, so sometimes it’s several days while others have waited a few months. How long is “unreasonable”? I think 12 years is an unreasonable sentence for Laura and Euna, but nobody expects Kim Jong-il to be alive that much longer. Likewise nobody who’s been following this matter closely truly thinks the 2 Americans will do one year, let alone 12.
There are ways of bypassing rules and definitions. When North Korea extracted $5000 for the release of US citizen Evan Hunziker, it was called a “hotel bill” for his 3 month detention in a Pyongyang “guest house”. (The North Koreans originally demanded $100,000 to include a “fine”, but Bill Richardson refused and negotiated the lower monetary demand.)
What about political or diplomatic demands? North Korea is perpetually making political and diplomatic demands anyway. Any attempt to demonstrate a link will instead be called a coincidence as long as the negotiating parties are not the same. For example, whoever goes to Pyongyang as a token US envoy can negotiate the release of Laura and Euna and then some time later a different American politician will come back to whichever North Korean they were negotiating with before and announce a “new position” on a particular issue. This is likely why the North Koreans don’t want Al Gore alone, an obvious ideal envoy able to pay an obscenely high hotel bill, but he’s someone who is not in the current US government administration.