Trump would not be first to get North Korea to free prisoners
President Trump’s administration said that three U.S. prisoners held by North Korea may soon be released and that his policies have succeeded where previous administrations failed.
But past U.S. presidents have won the release of prisoners from North Korea, and the regime in Pyongyang routinely uses detainees as bargaining chips.
“This is a pretty regular thing,” said Jeffrey Lewis, an analyst at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. “North Korea grabs people and ransoms them when things get better.”
In 2009, Kim Jong Un’s father, Kim Jong Il, pardoned and released two American detainees when former president Bill Clinton visited Pyongyang as part of a high-level U.S. delegation sanctioned by the Obama administration. The two women flew back to the USA with Clinton and his delegation.
Kim has not released the three current U.S. detainees, and there has been no official announcement from Pyongyang about it. Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor on Trump’s legal team, said a release is imminent.
“We got Kim Jong Un impressed enough to be releasing three prisoners today,” Giuliani, told Fox & Friends on Thursday.
Wednesday Trump tweeted: “As everybody is aware, the past Administration has long been asking for three hos- tages to be released from a North Korean Labor camp, but to no avail. Stay tuned!”
Two of the three people held by North Korea were imprisoned last year during Trump’s presidency.
North Korea has a history of kidnapping people outside its borders and jailing foreigners who visit the isolated country.
Otto Warmbier, a college student accused of trying to steal a propaganda poster, was released last year and died shortly after returning home.
His release may have been related to his poor health.
Two Americans were released in 2014 after a secret mission by James Clapper, Obama’s director of national intelligence.
North Korea has repeatedly shifted from bellicose threats and violent confrontations to peaceful gestures. “North Korea used this approach many times before,” said Balazs Szalontai, an associate professor at Korea University.
Kim has seized the diplomatic initiative since agreeing to meet with Trump in a summit likely to be held in the coming weeks.