Religious crusades to Pyongyang no more naive than any other kind.

By now, you know that it has happened again, and the unethical North Korea tourism industry has flung a third sacrifice into the bubbling, sulfurous maw of the North Korean penal system. The North Koreans identify the latest victim as Jeffrey Edward Fowle, who joins erstwhile tour guide Ken Bae,* and tourist and possible defector Matthew Todd Miller. (This obviously doesn’t include Merrill Newman, who was released not long after his arrest.) Despite State Department warnings and my own humanitarian pleas, some people still haven’t the good sense and stay the … to stay out of North Korea.

Kyodo News reports that North Korea arrested Fowle for leaving a Bible behind in his hotel room. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that Kyodo’s sources in Pyongyang are telling the truth (Kyodo, which has a bureau of Pyongyang, is presumably on friendly terms with the regime, although I acknowledge the likelihood that the report isn’t true.) That would imply that Fowle believed that hotel rooms in the Koryo (or whatever) Hotel are cleaned by ordinary hotel maids, who would feel safe enough from surveillance in a hotel for foreigners in Pyongyang to pick through this forbidden book, would be susceptible to an immediate religious experience, and also, that a hotel maid would be in a position to catalyze political change within North Korea. It may sound silly, but this idea would put Fowle in some very sophisticated company.

If we unpack this idea, it supposes that the brief and casual introduction of verboten ideas to likely intelligence agents (or at the very least, carefully vetted “core class” citizens) in highly monitored and controlled settings is likely to change the political climate in Pyongyang in profound and cryptic ways that will only be evident at some unknowable date. If this sounds ridiculously naive, it is. And if these naive premises sound vaguely familiar, you’re right again.

If Fowle really believed what Kyodo’s report implies, his theory shares (or shared) a common set of shaky premises with theories of economic engagement espoused by European profiteers, otherwise-unemployable Berkeley graduates, failed career diplomats, and Park Avenue sophisticates — the sort of people who are probably sneering at the ignorant bumpkin from Jesusland this very moment, yet who themselves believe it possible to reform North Korean elites by forcing them to sit through the New World Symphony. (Fact: most of my posts, including this one, are written while I listen to the music of Sergei Prokofiev. This does not make me a Marxist idealist.)

In fact, Fowle does have at least two theoretical advantages over economic engagers. First, although North Korea is arguably a theocracy, it is clearly challenged spiritually. Economic engagers, on the other hand, think they have much to teach the North Korean regime about capitalism, despite that regime’s impressive accomplishments at international money laundering and the concealment of illicit international business transactions behind layers of fictitious names, shell companies, and false bills of lading. Similarly, naive foreigners think they have much to teach some of the world’s most accomplished hackers and cyber-warriors about information technology.

Second, smarter religious missionaries, unlike economic “engagers” and profiteers, have done tremendous good for the people of North Korea. The Buddhist humanitarian the Venerable Pomnyun and the organization he leads, Good Friends, have done their utmost in impossible circumstances to feed starving North Koreans. Christian missionaries have helped to smuggle tens of thousands of refugees out of North Korea. For refugees who make it to South Korea or other destinations, Christian churches have given thousands of them a social network and a sense of community in their new homelands, and have helped spiritually marooned people adjust to their new lives in very unfamiliar societies. Let’s just say that efforts toward religious and economic engagement are both worthy in theory, but frequently misapplied in practice. Both efforts would be better spent on refugees (in South Korea, China, and elsewhere) and on subversive engagement with non-elite North Koreans.

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North Korea did not have to see the generous terms of Bowe Bergdahl’s exchange to see how three hostages could be useful going into the next nuclear crisis. Publicly, hostages often gain North Korea presidential visits and other diplomatic victories. Privately, we have little idea how many times U.S. officials have been restrained from imposing new sanctions on North Korea for fear of provoking it to put a hostage on “trial.” The naivete of many individual Americans — whether economic, diplomatic, or religious “engagers” — has become a liability to U.S. foreign policy. A travel ban on tourism to North Korea would mitigate that liability, while putting useful pressure on Pyongyang to release its current hostages.

The State Department, out of irremediable impotence and understandable exasperation, had already been warning people against travel to North Korea before the Fowle incident, but as we’ve noted here before, some insects are too attracted to the brilliance of the light to notice the flashes and the zaps. State was also whining that it couldn’t ban travel to North Korea, but that is nonsense. Travel bans are a little trickier than other sanctions authorities, because Section 203 of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the broad authority that allows the President to issue many sanctions by executive order, doesn’t authorize the President to ban transactions incident to travel. A travel ban would require congressional action, something this President seems predisposed against in other contexts. Still, does anyone suppose that members of Congress of either party would resist if the President asked them to impose a travel ban on North Korea?

If our government ever decided to ban transactions incident to travel to North Korea, it could easily model such a ban on the statutes and regulations that ban transactions incident to travel to Cuba now. The statutory authority for the Cuba travel ban is the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act of 2000.

SEC. 910. REQUIREMENTS RELATING TO CERTAIN TRAVEL-RELATED TRANSACTIONS WITH CUBA.

    (a) Authorization of Travel Relating to Commercial Sale of Agricultural Commodities.–The Secretary of the Treasury shall promulgate regulations under which the travel-related transactions listed in subsection (c) of section 515.560 of title 31, Code of Federal Regulations, may be authorized on a case-by-case basis by a specific license for travel to, from, or within Cuba for the commercial export sale of agricultural commodities pursuant to the provisions of this title.

    (b) Prohibition on Travel Relating to Tourist Activities.–

     (1) In general.–Notwithstanding any other provision of law or regulation, the Secretary of the Treasury, or any other Federal official, may not authorize the travel-related transactions listed in subsection (c) of section 515.560 of title 31, Code of Federal Regulations, either by a general license or on a case-by-case basis by a specific license for travel to, from, or within Cuba for tourist activities.

        (2) Definition.–In this subsection, the term “tourist activities” means any activity with respect to travel to, from, or within Cuba that is not expressly authorized in subsection (a) of this section, in any of paragraphs (1) through (12) of section 515.560 of title 31, Code of Federal Regulations, or in any section referred to in any of such paragraphs (1) through (12) (as such sections were in effect on June 1, 2000).

There are other statutory authorities for the Cuba travel ban here, here, and here.

Of course, a few Americans do travel to Cuba anyway. Michael Totten did it not long ago and wrote a very interesting travelogue about it. Americans also get in trouble in Cuba. One of them is being held in prison there now, and our government can’t get him out. Getting around the Cuba travel ban, though not impossible, is certainly inconvenient, which is why very few Americans go there. If the State Department wanted to reduce the risk of more arrests of Americans in North Korea, it could find a way. Of course, the Administration would have to work with Congress to get there. That may explain why the Administration isn’t pursuing it.

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* Bae, who entered North Korea as a tour operator, and who at some point undertook a religious mission while there, fits at least two categories of “engager” for purposes of this discussion. Also, I changed the title of this post a few minutes after publication, because “dumber” seemed a bit harsh for circumstances that remain unconfirmed, and that suggest the best of intentions.

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Update: Here’s more information about Fowle and his arrest, via The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, Yonhap, and The Joongang Ilbo. For understandable reasons, his family denies that he was on a mission for his church. Let’s hope, for his sake, that Fowle sticks to that story under questioning.