Believing Kim Jong-un is unbelievable
Put aside your political leanings for a minute. Now put yourself in the shoes of Cindy and Fred Warmbier, the parents of University of Virginia student Otto Warmbier.
Otto of course is the American young man who was arrested, convicted, and imprisoned for trying to steal a propaganda poster in 2016 while on a tour of North Korea. After intense diplomatic negotiations, he was eventually released in June 2017-but in dire medical condition and comatose.
Otto died less than a week after being returned to the United States, never having regained consciousness. As a parent, how would you feel losing your child this way, while he was in the custody of a brutal dictatorship?
And how would you feel if the American president publicly sided with the dictator, Kim Jong-un? President Trump, speaking of discussing Warmbier’s treatment and death with Kim at their recent summit, said, “[Kim] tells me that he didn’t know about it, and I will take him at his word.” That statement added another layer of pain to the Wambiers’ tremendous loss.
Anyone who has worked in the business world knows that one of the cardinal rules is to keep upper management informed of potential problems. That goes doubly so for world politics, where something like the Warmbier case could easily have led to a major international incident.
Kim Jong-un had to know exactly what was going on with Otto Warmbier every step of the way, especially as a dictator who controls everything in his repressive regime. To believe Kim’s denial, you have to be a fool, or worry more about a despot’s feelings than those of some of your own citizens.
Bernard Quarrick
Uniontown