Pyongyang’s Prisoner Release Is a Positive Step—but Only a First Step

Olivia Enos

Security, Asia

Pyongyang is not immune from criticism on its human-rights record.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s second trip to Pyongyang was remarkably productive. Not only did he nail down a date and location for the highly anticipated U.S.–North Korea summit, he also managed to secure the release of three American hostages.

Joining Pompeo on the flight back to Washington were Kim Dong-chul, Tony Kim and Kim Hak-song—three Americans who were sentenced by North Korea to hard labor on trumped-up charges of political crimes. Kim Dong-chul, a pastor, was convicted of spying in April 2016 and sentenced to ten years hard labor. Tony Kim and Kim Hak-song, professors at Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, were taken into custody in early 2017. The former was charged with espionage, the latter with “hostile acts.”

Calls to release the three prisoners took on new urgency last year after Americans witnessed the effects of North Korean detention on another American, twenty-two-year-old college student Otto Warmbier. North Korean authorities released him last June, sending him home in a comatose state. He died within days of his arrival.

Warmbier’s tragic death was a wake-up call to many Americans who previously did not know about—or felt removed from—the abuses committed regularly by the North Korean regime.

What is so encouraging about North Korea’s decision to release the three Americans is what it signals: that the regime is not immune from criticism on its human rights record. Their release should embolden U.S. negotiators to raise other pressing human rights issues at the summit.