中文导读
近日，在朝鲜关押了15个多月的美国大学生Otto Warmbier在被释放回国六天后不治身亡。朝鲜声称Warmbier在朝鲜旅游期间偷窃政治宣传标语，并判处其15年劳役。6月13日Warmbier被释放，但此时的他已经变成了一个植物人。医生表示他的脑组织遭受严重损伤，但受伤原因还不清楚，并没有朝鲜所说的肉毒中毒迹象但也没有遭受暴力击打的迹象。该事件后美国关于禁止公民赴朝旅游的呼声持续增大，不过即便禁令颁布，美国与朝鲜在各个方面的谈判和协商仍旧会继续。
The tragic death of Otto Warmbier sharpens a diplomatic debate
“HOW safe is it? Extremely safe!” So read the guidance for North Korea on the website of a Chinese travel company when Otto Warmbier, a 21-year-old American student, signed up for a five-day trip in December 2015. Mr Warmbier was arrested the next month at the airport in Pyongyang, as he was leaving, and accused of attempting to steal a propaganda placard. He was tried in March 2016, and sentenced to 15 years’ hard labour. “I have been very impressed by the Korean government’s humanitarian treatment of severe criminals like myself,” he said during a televised confession.
The North Korean authorities denied access to Mr Warmbier after his trial. But on June 13th they released him, in a vegetative state, “on compassionate grounds”, after talks between the North’s ambassador to the UN and America’s point-man on the country. He was flown home to Ohio, where he died six days later. Doctors said he was suffering from a catastrophic brain injury, probably sustained shortly after his trial. But the cause of the injury is unclear. The doctors could find no evidence either of the North Korean explanation—botulism, a food-borne disease—or of the obvious alternative, a severe beating.
On past precedent, it seems likely that the harm done to Mr Warmbier was unintended. Although 18 American citizens have been detained by North Korea over the past two decades (and ten since Kim Jong Un, its leader, took power five-and-a-half years ago), they have rarely been hurt. Foreign travellers are typically held either on espionage charges or for “hostile acts” against the North Korean state—bilingual Bibles left in bathrooms, for example. These prisoners are mainly kept as bargaining chips in the hope of negotiations.
Mr Warmbier’s case will fuel growing calls in America for a ban on travel to North Korea. About 1,000 Americans visit each year, roughly one-fifth of all tourists to North Korea. Backers of a ban say that such tours do “nothing but provide funds to a tyrannical regime”. Yet revenue from tourism, estimated at $30m-40m a year, is only a small sliver of even the North’s backward economy. Opponents of a ban say it would simply help North Korea shut out the outside world.
Even if travel restrictions are put in place, talks like those that secured Mr Warmbier’s release may still continue, says Scott Snyder of the Council on Foreign Relations, an American think-tank. China, with which America held security talks this week, is keen to promote dialogue over North Korea’s quest to build nuclear missiles capable of hitting America. Indeed, it will argue that growing tensions make talks more necessary than ever.
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June 22nd 2017 | Asia | 438 words
