Diplomatic visits helped free prisoner
It took months of “quiet diplomacy,” a change in U.S. presidents and an American diplomat’s extraordinary, secret visit to Pyongyang to bring Otto Warmbier home.
U.S. special envoy Joseph Yun was a household name to almost no one before Warmbier’s return to Ohio on Tuesday, yet he joins an exceedingly short list of U.S. officials to set foot in North Korea in recent years. The last such visit is believed to have been in November 2014, when former National Intelligence Director James Clapper brought home two other jailed Americans.
New details that have emerged about Yun’s brief visit to the North Korean capital illustrate the deep level of estrangement between the U.S. and North Korea, two countries that don’t have diplomatic relations and have technically been in a state of war for more than half a century, despite the armistice that ended the Korean War.
When Yun finally laid eyes on the comatose Warmbier in a North Korean hospital, it was the first time the U.S. could verify his condition in person since his sentencing more than a year earlier, the State Department said.
For Yun, a longtime Asia hand who joined the foreign service in 1985, the trip was the culmination of a series of delicate and rare conversations between the U.S. and North Korean officials that transpired since President Trump took office. They started in Norway — a nation playing the role of neutral third party — and moved to New York, where North Korean diplomats are accredited at the United Nations.
Warmbier, 22, spent almost a year and a half in captivity after being arrested in January 2016. The North accused the University of Virginia student of entering the country under the guise of a tourist and plotting against the nation’s unity with “the tacit connivance of the U.S. government.”
Paraded before the media a month later in Pyongyang, he tearfully apologized for attempting to steal a political banner from a staff-only section of his hotel. The Swedes, who represent U.S. interests in North Korea, managed to visit him in March 2016, a few weeks before he was sentenced to 15 years hard labor.
The “quiet diplomacy,” as the State Department put it, came at a time of North Korean missile tests and increasing U.S. pressure on Kim Jong Un’s totalitarian government. In February, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson briefed Trump on the Americans held in North Korea. Trump directed him to do everything possible to secure their release, officials said.
Then in May, Yun met in the Norwegian capital of Oslo with senior officials from North Korea’s Foreign Ministry. The North Koreans agreed to let Swedish diplomats visit the U.S. detainees, including Warmbier. Shortly after the Swedish visits, the North reached out to the U.S. with an urgent request to meet in person.
Yun met with the North Korean ambassador to the U.N. in New York on June 6 and was told of Warmbier’s medical status. Over the next days, officials said, Tillerson and Trump discussed the case. Tillerson then dispatched Yun to North Korea. It’s unclear if Yun knew as he departed if he’d be allowed to bring Warmbier home.