By Casey Lartigue Jr.
Should Americans be banned from visiting North Korea?
That evergreen chit-chat topic among reporters and commentators is now being taken seriously by the U.S. Congress, with the proposed North Korea Travel Control Act requiring licenses for U.S. citizens seeking to visit North Korea. The Act's proposed ban on tourism is an overreaction to an American tourist being returned by North Korea in a comatose state.
I oppose such a ban, even a temporary one, because it infringes on the individual freedom of movement. Hard cases make bad law, as the oldsaying goes, with well-meaning people advocating laws based on extreme or rare cases. Sixteen Americans have been detained by North Korea over the last few years for "hostile acts." More Americans die annually in drive-by shootings, while playing sports or accidents at home.
Responding to North Korea with restrictions results in American policy looking like North Korea's. North Korea blocks North Koreans from leaving but allows Americans to visit, Americans allows North Koreans in but would start blocking American tourists from going to North Korea. Meaning that North Koreans who escape to the U.S. and become U.S. citizens would be banned from frivolous trips to North Korea ― by the U.S. government.
Commentators often ask: Should free people visit a gulag state? Each person needs to answer that question based on his or her own interests, knowledge, resources and time. Some treasure their North Korea experiences, while others regret going.
I have made it clear in previous columns here that I won't visit North Korea as long as North Koreans are prohibited from leaving. When people ask me if they should visit North Korea, my answer is clear: "No." I advise them to instead support North Korean refugees who need help with adjusting to living in the outside world. When they say they are going anyway, I wish them well. They are free to go to the moon for all I care.
International attention has focused on the American tourist who is now comatose, but let's not forget about people who are not free and have no opportunity to escape the North Korean regime. For example, Hwang Won was one of those unlucky people abducted to North Korea on a hijacked airplane in 1969. He and the 10 other South Koreans have been blocked from leaving and blocked ― with one brief exception at a family reunion ― from contacting family members for almost five decades.
For more than 15 years his son, Hwang In-cheol, has been leading a campaign to have his father released from North Korea. He has probably appealed to every government and international organization in contact with North Korea, often leads one-man protests to raise awareness and has pleaded with the world to help him have his father released. He has done this mostly at personal expense, as a day laborer raising his own kids, with ever diminishing prospects of a reunion with his father (who would now be 79).
Instead of meeting his father, Hwang has been met with a stonewall response from North Korea. The North Korean regime seizes or blocks people, pulls up the curtains, then occasionally responds to requests through international channels by answering that the people being asked about are happy inside the dictator's country and never ever want to leave North Korea. The regime has border guards with shoot-to-kill orders in case anyone embraces madness and forgets how much they love living in North Korea.
In addition to holding people it has kidnapped, the North Korean regime continues to block families separated during the Korean War from being in contact. It occasionally agrees on brief family reunions when Seoul pays enough money and attaches no conditions.
With online communication, Koreans across the peninsula could be in contact via Skype or Kakao, but information is a threat to the North Korean regime, which continues to violate the rights of thousands of people to be in contact with family members, not even allowing people to say goodbye to ailing relatives.
And then there are refugees who have escaped North Korea at the risk of death, and now are blocked from contacting family members or must discreetly use third-party brokers.
Yes, there really are people who enjoy visiting such a country that breaks up so many families. One American enjoying the freedom to travel to North Korea's gulag has been returned in a comatose state, but one tragic case doesn't justify blocking free people from traveling. The real problem is there are many nameless and unknown people who are brutalized by the North Korean regime who have no chance to escape to the kind of freedom that U.S. tourists enjoy, for now.
Casey Lartigue Jr. is the co-founder of the Teach North Korean Refugees Global Education Center (TNKR) in Seoul. He can be reached at CJL@post.harvard.edu
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That evergreen chit-chat topic among reporters and commentators is now being taken seriously by the U.S. Congress, with the proposed North Korea Travel Control Act requiring licenses for U.S. citizens seeking to visit North Korea. The Act's proposed ban on tourism is an overreaction to an American tourist being returned by North Korea in a comatose state.
I oppose such a ban, even a temporary one, because it infringes on the individual freedom of movement. Hard cases make bad law, as the oldsaying goes, with well-meaning people advocating laws based on extreme or rare cases. Sixteen Americans have been detained by North Korea over the last few years for "hostile acts." More Americans die annually in drive-by shootings, while playing sports or accidents at home.
Responding to North Korea with restrictions results in American policy looking like North Korea's. North Korea blocks North Koreans from leaving but allows Americans to visit, Americans allows North Koreans in but would start blocking American tourists from going to North Korea. Meaning that North Koreans who escape to the U.S. and become U.S. citizens would be banned from frivolous trips to North Korea ― by the U.S. government.
Commentators often ask: Should free people visit a gulag state? Each person needs to answer that question based on his or her own interests, knowledge, resources and time. Some treasure their North Korea experiences, while others regret going.
I have made it clear in previous columns here that I won't visit North Korea as long as North Koreans are prohibited from leaving. When people ask me if they should visit North Korea, my answer is clear: "No." I advise them to instead support North Korean refugees who need help with adjusting to living in the outside world. When they say they are going anyway, I wish them well. They are free to go to the moon for all I care.
International attention has focused on the American tourist who is now comatose, but let's not forget about people who are not free and have no opportunity to escape the North Korean regime. For example, Hwang Won was one of those unlucky people abducted to North Korea on a hijacked airplane in 1969. He and the 10 other South Koreans have been blocked from leaving and blocked ― with one brief exception at a family reunion ― from contacting family members for almost five decades.
For more than 15 years his son, Hwang In-cheol, has been leading a campaign to have his father released from North Korea. He has probably appealed to every government and international organization in contact with North Korea, often leads one-man protests to raise awareness and has pleaded with the world to help him have his father released. He has done this mostly at personal expense, as a day laborer raising his own kids, with ever diminishing prospects of a reunion with his father (who would now be 79).
Instead of meeting his father, Hwang has been met with a stonewall response from North Korea. The North Korean regime seizes or blocks people, pulls up the curtains, then occasionally responds to requests through international channels by answering that the people being asked about are happy inside the dictator's country and never ever want to leave North Korea. The regime has border guards with shoot-to-kill orders in case anyone embraces madness and forgets how much they love living in North Korea.
In addition to holding people it has kidnapped, the North Korean regime continues to block families separated during the Korean War from being in contact. It occasionally agrees on brief family reunions when Seoul pays enough money and attaches no conditions.
With online communication, Koreans across the peninsula could be in contact via Skype or Kakao, but information is a threat to the North Korean regime, which continues to violate the rights of thousands of people to be in contact with family members, not even allowing people to say goodbye to ailing relatives.
And then there are refugees who have escaped North Korea at the risk of death, and now are blocked from contacting family members or must discreetly use third-party brokers.
Yes, there really are people who enjoy visiting such a country that breaks up so many families. One American enjoying the freedom to travel to North Korea's gulag has been returned in a comatose state, but one tragic case doesn't justify blocking free people from traveling. The real problem is there are many nameless and unknown people who are brutalized by the North Korean regime who have no chance to escape to the kind of freedom that U.S. tourists enjoy, for now.
Casey Lartigue Jr. is the co-founder of the Teach North Korean Refugees Global Education Center (TNKR) in Seoul. He can be reached at CJL@post.harvard.edu
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