N. Korea Perestroika Watch: 2 U.S. tourists to face “trial” for petty heresies

One of the core arguments of the Sunshine Policy and its “engagement”-based derivative theories is that more people-to-people contact between Americans and North Koreas will reduce tensions, stimulate economic and political reforms, and eventually, improve inter-governmental relations.* The last two decades have been unkind to this theory, but today, North Korea made an announcement suggesting that its opposite may be closer to the truth.

SEOUL—North Korea said Monday it will charge two Americans in its custody with unspecified crimes, a move that may signal the start of a process to extract coerced confessions from the men and eventually release them.

A four-sentence statement from North Korea’s state media said U.S. tourists Matthew Miller and Jeffrey Fowle had been investigated for “perpetrating hostile acts” after entering the country. It said North Korea had evidence and testimony from both men about their alleged actions.

Mr. Miller, 24 years old, and Mr. Fowle, 56, entered North Korea on separate tours in April.

Mr. Miller’s detention was announced by North Korea on April 25, two weeks after he arrived. At that time, North Korea said that Mr. Miller, who was traveling on a private tour, had declared he wasn’t a tourist and tore up his visa upon arrival.

Days later, Mr. Fowle, a road-maintenance worker from Miamisburg, Ohio, arrived in North Korea for a group tour. The North said in early June that it detained Mr. Fowle for committing “hostile acts” against the country, without elaborating, adding that he remained under investigation.

Japan’s Kyodo News, citing unidentified diplomatic sources, reported that Mr. Fowle was detained because of a Bible that had been left behind in his hotel room. North Korea sees the spread of religion as a threat to the grip of its regime.

The trials of Messrs. Miller and Fowle could be the beginning of a stage-managed process of North Korea finding them guilty and releasing them after securing confessions from them. In recent months, foreigners who have been taken prisoner have made written or videotaped confessions under coercion as a prerequisite for their release. [Wall Street Journal]

The Obama Administration is now reduced to pleading for the release of the men due to “humanitarian” concerns. A U.N. Commission of Inquiry recently expanded at some length on the limitations of appealing to Kim Jong Un’s humanitarian side, but the administration shows no indication of having read the Commission’s report.

Not only does the scorpion again reveal his nature, but Kim Jong Un may have added hostage-taking to his father’s repertoire of nuclear foreplay. Miller was arrested in mid-April, when North Korea seemed about to be ready to test, and the North Koreans arrested Bae in November 2013, weeks before North Korea tested a long-range rocket in December. North Korea followed this with a nuke the following February.

The arrests and prosecutions seem arbitrary, and are otherwise difficult to explain as logical legal precedent. Short, Newman, Fowle, and Miller all appeared to be harmless inquisitive imbeciles. If any of the four was more “culpable” than the others, it was Newman, with his wartime history of supporting anti-government North Korean guerrillas, yet he was released relatively quickly. The available evidence tells us that Short (who was not tried) read his Bible openly; Fowle (who will be tried) is said to have passively or inadvertently left his Bible in a hotel room. (What little we know about the reasons for Bae’s detention suggests that he is in a category by himself.)

By “harmless,” of course, I mean harmless to the government of North Korea. Depending how Pyongyang uses its revenues, tourism could actually be quite harmful to the North Korean people and their hopes for living in a reformed society. Tourist travel to North Korea certainly hasn’t helped the Obama Administration execute a North Korea policy it admittedly doesn’t have. As for my characterization, “inquisitive imbecile,” its major premise should be self-explanatory to anyone with good sense.

Long before they ever heard of Bowe Bergdahl, the North Koreans knew that the detention of Americans restrains the policy options of the U.S. government. If restraining U.S. reactions to North Korean weapons testing was a reason for North Korea’s detention and trial of these men, it would validate John Bolton’s attribution of “terrorist” motives to them.

Admittedly, the evidence for this link is imperfect. The detentions of American Merrill Newman and Australian John Short last year did not precede a major North Korean weapons test, but did coincide with a period of internal tension following the purge of Jang Song-Thaek. Both men were released shortly after their arrests, suggesting that if either was arrested as part of some greater plan, those plans changed quickly.

Whether you agree or disagree that North Korea is arresting Americans to acquire hostages, it has never been clearer that America’s trade surplus in inquisitive imbeciles has become a significant strategic liability for its government. However North Korea is spending the revenue it generates from tourism, it has never been clearer that U.S. tourism to North Korea is not reforming North Korea. Indeed, tourism has probably done more to restrain President Obama’s policy options than Kim Jong Un’s. That alone is reason enough for the Obama Administration to ban transactions incident to travel to North Korea, or at the very least, to tighten OFAC licensing regulations relating to these transactions.

* Park Wang-Ja was not available for comment.