A ‘gesture of goodwill’
Focus shifts to nuclear summit with Trump after the release of 3 American captives
The release Wednesday of three Americans held as prisoners by North Korea is the latest goodwill gesture by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un before he holds a historic summit with President Trump in the coming weeks.
The three men — Kim DongChul, Kim Hak-Song and Tony Kim — walked on their own from a van and onto the waiting plane of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to begin their journey home to U.S. soil.
Pompeo met with the North Korean leader during his nearly 13-hour visit to Pyongyang to plan the meeting with Trump about abandoning nuclear weapons in the Korean Peninsula.
Trump said he would welcome the Americans early Thursday when they landed at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, just outside the nation’s capital.
Pompeo called Trump as soon as the plane cleared North Korean airspace to tell him the men were in good health. Other officials notified their families, according to the Associated Press. “They all walked up the stairs themselves, with their own power, so good enough to do that,” Pompeo said. The three men, seized between 2015 and 2017, were sentenced to years in North Korea’s brutal camps for anti-state offenses.
Tony Kim’s family issued a statement on Twitter thanking those involved in his release.
“We ... want to thank the President for engaging directly with N. Korea. Mostly, we thank God for Tony’s safe return,” they said.
They called for prayers for “the people of North Korea and for the release of all who are still being held.”
The White House commended North Korea for the move, saying in a statement, “President Trump appreciates leader Kim Jong Un’s action to release these American citizens, and views this as a positive gesture of goodwill.”
South Korean President Moon Jaein welcomed the action.
“North Korea’s decision will be very positive for the successful hosting of the North American summit,” presidential spokesman Yoon Young-chan said.
Moon asked Kim during a meeting April 27 to release six South Koreans detained in the North.
“I hope that our detainees will be repatriated as soon as possible in order to further spread the reconciliation between the two Koreas and the spring of peace that has started on the Korean Peninsula,” Yoon said.
Who are the three Americans?
Kim Hak-Song was accused of “hostile acts” in May 2017. He was doing agricultural development work at the research farm of Pyongyang University of Science and Technology and lived in Pyongyang.
He is an ethnic Korean born in China. He studied in California and became a U.S. citizen in the 2000s but never forgot his roots.
“He was a very diligent, hardworking man determined to help people in North Korea,” his friend David Kim told CNN.
Tony Kim was detained at the Pyongyang airport in April 2017 as he was set to depart the country. He also was accused of “hostile acts.”
He had spent a month teaching accounting at Pyongyang University of Science and Technology and lived in North Korea with his wife, who may still be there. The university is funded largely by evangelical Christians from the USA and China.
Kim Dong-Chul of Fairfax, Va., a suburb of Washington, was arrested in October 2015 and sentenced to 10 years of hard labor in April 2016 on charges of spying and other offenses.
He lived in Rason, North Korea, in a special economic zone where he ran a trading and hotel services company.
Plans for Trump-Kim meeting
Trump repeated Wednesday that a time and place for his meeting with Kim had been set, but he did not give the details other than to say it wouldn’t be at the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea.
Pompeo, before he met with Kim, said the United States would not provide economic relief to North Korea, which is under some of the strictest international sanctions in the world, before it achieved Trump’s goal of denuclearization.
“We are not going to do this in small increments, where the world is essentially coerced into relieving economic pressure,” he said. “That won’t lead to the outcome that I know Kim Jong Un wants and I know President Trump is demanding.”
Though the president’s goal for North Korea’s nuclear program is clear, his objectives for the United States and allies South Korea and Japan have not been described in depth.
Moon and Kim issued a joint declaration after their summit in April that the two countries would seek a formal end to the Korean War, which ended in 1953 without a peace treaty. The two countries have scheduled a family reunification event for Aug. 15.