SEOUL: North Korea’s missile and nuclear tests, its carefully scripted propaganda bluster, even its military threats: Far from the scattershot workings of a madman, most of this fits the playbook of a small, proud country well used to stoking tensions to get concessions it would otherwise not receive from surrounding big powers.
What happened to Otto Warmbier, an American college student who died just days after North Korea released him from detention in a coma, is far more difficult to make sense of.
It jars so strikingly with the fates of most past detained Americans that outside observers are left struggling not only with the mystery of what killed Warmbier but also with what his death means for attempts by Washington and its allies to stop North Korea’s pursuit of a nuclear-tipped ICBM that can target the US mainland.
“The treatment of Otto Warmbier is beyond the pale of North Korea’s usual standards,” said John Delury, an Asia expert at Seoul’s Yonsei University. “It’s worth a forceful response. The US government should not just throw up its hands and say, ‘This is just how North Korea is.’ But how do you do that in a smart way where there is some modicum of accountability?“
What follows is a closer examination of one of the more perplexing and heart-rending developments in North Korea’s long, antagonistic standoff with its neighbors and Washington.
WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED?
It may never be known, but there are some clues — as well as widespread speculation.
The University of Virginia student was medically evacuated from North Korea last week, more than a year after a court sentenced him to 15 years in prison with hard labor for allegedly trying to steal a propaganda banner.
Early this month, North Korean diplomats at the United Nations urgently requested a face-to-face meeting with US officials in New York. During the meeting, Washington learned of Warmbier’s condition.
His family said it was told he fell into a coma soon after his March 2016 sentencing after contracting botulism and taking a sleeping pill. Doctors in Cincinnati said they found no active sign of botulism or evidence of beatings. They say he had severe brain damage but they don’t know what caused it.
Some observers believe that North Korea became worried because Warmbier’s condition suddenly worsened.
“North Korea sent him back to the United States before he died because more questions would have been raised about his death and the situation would have gotten worse if it had returned his dead body,” said Cheong Seong-jang, an analyst at the private Sejong Institute in South Korea.
Others believe it is unlikely that North Korea intentionally harmed Warmbier because he was valuable as a political pawn. Poor hygienic conditions, diet or bad medical care may have been responsible for a coma that North Korean doctors couldn’t handle.
Or maybe North Korea concealed his medical condition for so long in the hopes that he’d recover.
WHAT DOES IT SHOW ABOUT NORTH KOREA’S INNER WORKINGS?
Some outside experts see an internal divide in North Korea between officials who believe solving the long standoff with Seoul and Washington is the best way to improve the country’s economy and international standing, and hard-liners who believe that outside pressure, isolation and animosity help keep the ruling Kim family in power by solidifying domestic support.
The last thing conservatives want, the argument goes, is curious American tourists talking with citizens and undercutting decades of propaganda that assures North Koreans that they are the envy of the world.
But North Korea has also consistently lobbied Washington for specific concessions that would need deep negotiations, something recent US administrations have been reluctant to pursue because of the North’s weapons programs. North Korea’s demands include a peace treaty to officially end the Korean War and the removal of US troops from the Korean Peninsula.
“I’m sure there are high-ranking North Koreans who regret what happened to Warmbier and who think this was a mistake,” Delury said. “You’ve got to capitalize on this, and influence their internal debates to get them to recognize and acknowledge what happened.”
Another reading is that Warmbier’s death may simply show a pattern of North Korean callousness and a lack of concern over diplomatic repercussions. Outside groups say North Korea tortures thousands of its own citizens at prison camps. And earlier this year the North was suspected of arranging the killing of the half-brother of leader Kim Jong Un with VX nerve agent at a Malaysian airport.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR DIPLOMACY?
Outrage in the United States means that more pressure, not dialogue, is the more likely course. But some analysts believe negotiations could happen because of US worries about the safety of the three other Americans still detained in North Korea.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in has been unable to pursue the engagement with the North he favors because of a string of North Korean missile tests. Warmbier’s death could make it even harder, although some analysts think Moon could offer talks with the North as a way to get other detainees out of North Korea.
“It’s unlikely that Washington and Seoul will let Warmbier’s death entirely derail their efforts at talks because North Korea’s nuclear weapons program is such a serious and immediate threat,” said Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea expert at Seoul’s Dongguk University. Still, opponents will question whether such negotiations may give the North more time to expand its nuclear weapons program.
Delury said the Trump administration may try to pressure China to cut its large numbers of tourists to North Korea until the North apologizes and releases the other Americans.
Whether North Korea will actually respond to pressure or talks is unclear. The country may not worry about much of anything externally, even the death of a young tourist, until it reaches its goal of building a nuclear ICBM that can ease what it sees as decades of US and South Korean hostility.
Associated Press writers Hyung-jin Kim and Kim Tong-hyung contributed to this report.
American detainee’s death in North Korea baffles experts
American detainee’s death in North Korea baffles experts
’Massive’ ballistic missile attack on Ukraine’s Kharkiv: mayor
- The regional governor counted seven Russian strikes and said casualties were still being assessed
“Kharkiv is under a massive missile attack. A series of explosions were heard in the city and there are still ballistic missiles heading toward the city,” he wrote on Telegram.
The regional governor counted seven Russian strikes and said casualties were still being assessed.
Russia’s defense ministry said Wednesday its forces had shot down 59 Ukrainian drones overnight while the Ukrainian Air Force reported the launch of Kalibr cruise missiles from the Black Sea, although it was not initially clear where they were headed.
Russia has accelerated its advance across eastern Ukraine in recent months, looking to secure as much territory as possible before US president-elect Donald Trump comes to power in January.
The Republican has promised to bring a swift end to the nearly three-year-long conflict, without proposing any concrete terms for a ceasefire or peace deal.
Moscow’s army claims to have seized more than 190 Ukrainian settlements this year, with Kyiv struggling to hold the line in the face of man power and ammunition shortages.
Japan’s top diplomat in China to address ‘challenges’
Beijing: Japanese foreign minister Takeshi Iwaya was due in Beijing on Wednesday for talks with counterpart Wang Yi and other top officials as Tokyo acknowledged “challenges and concerns” in ties.
The visit is Iwaya’s first to China since becoming Japan’s top diplomat earlier this year.
China and Japan are key trading partners, but increased friction over disputed territories and military spending has frayed ties in recent years.
Tensions also flared last year over Japan’s decision to begin releasing into the Pacific Ocean some of the 540 Olympic swimming pools’ worth of reactor cooling water amassed since the tsunami that led to the Fukushima nuclear disaster — an operation the UN atomic agency deemed safe.
China branded the move “selfish” and banned all Japanese seafood imports, but in September said it would “gradually resume” the trade.
China imported more than $500 million worth of seafood from Japan in 2022, according to customs data.
Iwaya told reporters in Tokyo on Tuesday that “China represents one of the most important bilateral relationships for us.”
“Between Japan and China, there are various possibilities but also multiple challenges and concerns,” he said.
“Both countries possess the heavy responsibilities for the peace and stability of our region and the international community,” he added.
China’s foreign ministry said Beijing sought to “strengthen dialogue and communication” in order to “properly manage differences” with Japan.
Beijing will “strive to build a constructive and stable China-Japan relationship that meets the requirements of the new era,” spokeswoman Mao Ning said.
Japan’s brutal occupation of parts of China before and during World War II also remains a sore point, with Beijing accusing Tokyo of failing to atone for its past.
Visits by Japanese officials to the Yasukuni shrine that honors war dead — including convicted war criminals — regularly prompt anger from Beijing.
Beijing’s more assertive presence around disputed territories in the region, meanwhile, has sparked Tokyo’s ire, leading it to boost security ties with key ally the United States and other countries.
In August, a Chinese military aircraft staged the first confirmed incursion by China into Japanese airspace, followed weeks later by a Japanese warship sailing through the Taiwan Strait for the first time.
Beijing’s rare test launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile into the Pacific Ocean in late September also drew strong protests from Tokyo, which said it had not been given advance notice.
China also in August formally indicted a Japanese man held since last year on espionage charges.
The man, an employee of the Japanese pharmaceutical company Astellas, was held in March last year and placed under formal arrest in October.
Trump vows to pursue executions after Biden commutes most of federal death row
- Presidents historically have no involvement in dictating or recommending the punishments that federal prosecutors seek for defendants in criminal cases, though Trump has long sought more direct control over the Justice Department’s operations
FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida: President-elect Donald Trump promised on Tuesday to “vigorously pursue” capital punishment after President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of most people on federal death row partly to stop Trump from pushing forward their executions.
Trump criticized Biden’s decision on Monday to change the sentences of 37 of the 40 condemned people to life in prison without parole, arguing that it was senseless and insulted the families of their victims. Biden said converting their punishments to life imprisonment was consistent with the moratorium imposed on federal executions in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder.
“Joe Biden just commuted the Death Sentence on 37 of the worst killers in our Country,” he wrote on his social media site. “When you hear the acts of each, you won’t believe that he did this. Makes no sense. Relatives and friends are further devastated. They can’t believe this is happening!”
Presidents historically have no involvement in dictating or recommending the punishments that federal prosecutors seek for defendants in criminal cases, though Trump has long sought more direct control over the Justice Department’s operations. The president-elect wrote that he would direct the department to pursue the death penalty “as soon as I am inaugurated,” but was vague on what specific actions he may take and said they would be in cases of “violent rapists, murderers, and monsters.”
He highlighted the cases of two men who were on federal death row for slaying a woman and a girl, had admitted to killing more and had their sentences commuted by Biden.
Is it a plan in motion or more rhetoric?
On the campaign trail, Trump often called for expanding the federal death penalty — including for those who kill police officers, those convicted of drug and human trafficking, and migrants who kill US citizens.
“Trump has been fairly consistent in wanting to sort of say that he thinks the death penalty is an important tool and he wants to use it,” said Douglas Berman, an expert on sentencing at Ohio State University’s law school. “But whether practically any of that can happen, either under existing law or other laws, is a heavy lift.”
Berman said Trump’s statement at this point seems to be just a response to Biden’s commutation.
“I’m inclined to think it’s still in sort of more the rhetoric phase. Just, ‘don’t worry. The new sheriff is coming. I like the death penalty,’” he said.
Most Americans have historically supported the death penalty for people convicted of murder, according to decades of annual polling by Gallup, but support has declined over the past few decades. About half of Americans were in favor in an October poll, while roughly 7 in 10 Americans backed capital punishment for murderers in 2007.
Death row inmates are mostly sentenced by states
Before Biden’s commutation, there were 40 federal death row inmates compared with more than 2,000 who have been sentenced to death by states.
“The reality is all of these crimes are typically handled by the states,” Berman said.
A question is whether the Trump administration would try to take over some state murder cases, such as those related to drug trafficking or smuggling. He could also attempt to take cases from states that have abolished the death penalty.
Could rape now be punishable by death?
Berman said Trump’s statement, along with some recent actions by states, may present an effort to get the Supreme Court to reconsider a precedent that considers the death penalty disproportionate punishment for rape.
“That would literally take decades to unfold. It’s not something that is going to happen overnight,” Berman said.
Before one of Trump’s rallies on Aug. 20, his prepared remarks released to the media said he would announce he would ask for the death penalty for child rapists and child traffickers. But Trump never delivered the line.
What were the cases highlighted by Trump?
One of the men Trump highlighted on Tuesday was ex-Marine Jorge Avila Torrez, who was sentenced to death for killing a sailor in Virginia and later pleaded guilty to the fatal stabbing of an 8-year-old and a 9-year-old girl in a suburban Chicago park several years before.
The other man, Thomas Steven Sanders, was sentenced to death for the kidnapping and slaying of a 12-year-old girl in Louisiana, days after shooting the girl’s mother in a wildlife park in Arizona. Court records show he admitted to both killings.
Some families of victims expressed anger with Biden’s decision, but the president had faced pressure from advocacy groups urging him to make it more difficult for Trump to increase the use of capital punishment for federal inmates. The ACLU and the US Conference of Catholic Bishops were some of the groups that applauded the decision.
Biden left three federal inmates to face execution. They are Dylann Roof, who carried out the 2015 racist slayings of nine Black members of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina; 2013 Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; and Robert Bowers, who fatally shot 11 congregants at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018, the deadliest antisemitic attack in UShistory.
Airstrikes target suspected Pakistani Taliban hideouts in Afghanistan
- The strikes were carried out in a mountainous area in Paktika province bordering Pakistan, said the officials
PESHAWAR, Pakistan: Pakistan in rare airstrikes targeted multiple suspected hideouts of the Pakistani Taliban inside neighboring Afghanistan on Tuesday, dismantling a training facility and killing some insurgents, four security officials said.
The strikes were carried out in a mountainous area in Paktika province bordering Pakistan, said the officials. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media on the record. It was unclear whether the jets went deep inside Afghanistan, and how the strikes were launched.
No spokesman for Pakistan’s military was immediately available to share further details. But it was the second such attack on alleged hideouts of the Pakistani Taliban since March, when Pakistan said intelligence-based strikes took place in the border regions inside Afghanistan.
In Kabul, the Afghan Defense Ministry condemned the airstrikes by Pakistan, saying the bombing targeted civilians, including women and children.
It said that most of the victims were refugees from the Waziristan region.
“The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan considers this a brutal act against all international principles and blatant aggression and strongly condemns it,” the ministry said.
Local residents said at least eight people, including women and children, were killed in the airstrikes by Pakistan. They said the death toll from the strikes may rise.
In a post on the X platform, the Afghan defense ministry said the Pakistani side should know that such unilateral measures are not a solution to any problem.
“The Islamic Emirate will not leave this cowardly act unanswered but rather considers the defense of its territory and territory to be its inalienable right.”
The strikes came hours after Mohammad Sadiq, Pakistan’s special representative for Afghanistan, traveled to Kabul to discuss a range of issues, including how to enhance bilateral trade, and improve ties.
Sadiq during the visit met with Sirajuddin Haqqani, Afghanistan’s acting interior minister, to offer his condolences over the Dec. 11 killing of his uncle Khalil Haqqani. He was the minister for refugees and repatriation who died in a suicide bombing that was claimed by a regional affiliate of the Daesh group.
Sadiq in a post on X said he also met with Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi and he “held wide ranging discussions. Agreed to work together to further strengthen bilateral cooperation as well as for peace and progress in the region.”
A delegation of the pro-Taliban Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam also visited Kabul on Tuesday to convey condolences over the killing of Haqqani’s uncle.
Islamabad often claims that the Pakistani Taliban use Afghan soil to launch attacks in Pakistan, a charge Kabul has denied.
Syed Muhammad Ali, an Islamabad-based security expert, said Tuesday’s airstrike “represents a clear and blunt warning to Pakistani Taliban that Pakistan will use all the available means against the terrorist outfit both inside and outside its borders.” However, it is not an indiscriminate use of force and due care was taken by Pakistan in ensuring that only the terrorist bases were hit and no civilian loss of life and property took place, he said.
The Afghan Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in 2021 and the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan has emboldened the Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, whose leaders and fighters are hiding in Afghanistan.
The TTP has stepped up attacks on Pakistani soldiers and police since November 2022, when it unilaterally ended a ceasefire with the government after the failure of months of talks hosted by Afghanistan’s government in Kabul. The TTP in recent months has killed and wounded dozens of soldiers in attacks inside the country.
On Christmas Eve, Pope Francis launches holy Jubilee year
- Pope had drawn an angry response from Israel at the weekend for condemning the “cruelty” of Israel’s strikes in Gaza that killed children
VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis opened the “Holy Door” of St. Peter’s Basilica on Christmas Eve on Tuesday, launching the Jubilee year of Catholic celebrations set to draw more than 30 million pilgrims to Rome.
The 88-year-old pontiff, who has recently been suffering from a cold, was pushed in a wheelchair up to the huge, ornate bronze door and knocked on it, before the doors opened.
In a ceremony watched on screens by thousands of faithful outside in St. Peter’s Square, the Argentine pontiff went through the door followed by a procession, as the bells of the Vatican basilica rang out.
Over the next 12 months, Catholic pilgrims will pass through the door — which is normally bricked up — by tradition benefiting from a “plenary indulgence,” a type of forgiveness for their sins.
Pope Francis then presided over the Christmas Eve mass in St. Peter’s, where he turned once again to the victims of war.
“We think of wars, of machine-gunned children, of bombs on schools and hospitals,” he said in his homily.
The pope had drawn an angry response from Israel at the weekend for condemning the “cruelty” of Israel’s strikes in Gaza that killed children.
He was due to deliver his traditional Christmas Day blessing, Urbi et Orbi (to the city and the world), at midday on Wednesday.
Some 700 security officers are being deployed around the Vatican and Rome for the Jubilee celebrations, with measures further tightened following Friday’s car-ramming attack on a Christmas market in Germany.
Much of Rome has also been given a facelift in preparation, with monuments such as the Trevi Fountain and the Ponte Sant’Angelo cleaned up and roads redesigned to improve the flow of traffic.
Many residents have questioned how the Eternal City — where key sites are already overcrowded and public transport is unreliable — will cope with millions more visitors next year.
Key Jubilee projects were only finished in the last few days after months of work that turned much of the city into a building site.
Inaugurating a new road tunnel at Piazza Pia next to the Vatican on Monday, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said it had taken a “little civil miracle” to get the project finished in time.
Over the course of the next few days, Holy Doors will be opened in Rome’s three major basilicas and in Catholic churches around the world.
On Thursday, Pope Francis will open a Holy Door at Rebibbia prison in Rome and preside over a mass in a show of support for the inmates.
Organized by the Church every 25 years, the Jubilee is intended as a period of reflection and penance, and is marked by a long list of cultural and religious events, from masses to exhibitions, conferences and concerts.
“It’s my first time in Rome and for me, to be here at the Vatican, I feel already blessed,” said Lisbeth Dembele, a 52-year-old French tourist visiting St. Peter’s Square earlier.
The Jubilee, whose motto this year is “Pilgrims of Hope,” is primarily aimed at the world’s almost 1.4 billion Catholics, but also aims to also reach a wider audience.
Traditions have evolved since the first such event back in 1300, launched by Pope Boniface VIII.
This year, the Vatican has provided pilgrims with online registration and multilingual phone apps to navigate events.
