The English-language propaganda arms of North Korea, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), and the Rodong Sinmun newspaper have yet to publish any news regarding the death of 22-year-old American Otto Warmbier as a result of his arrest in the country.
What they have published, however, is yet another screed against the United States, this one accusing America of creating the global refugee crisis triggered by mass migrations out of Syria, Iraq, and other war-torn Muslim countries in the Middle East and North Africa.
“The root cause of the unprecedented refugee crisis today is attributable to the U.S. and other Western countries’ foreign policy for aggression and plunder,” Rodong Sinmun announced Tuesday. “All the foreign policies pursued by the U.S. and the West are based on the imperialist viewpoint of looking down upon other nations and suppressing them while seeking one’s own interests only in utter disregard of others, the ‘logic of strength’ guided by jungle law aimed to dominate all countries and nations of the world by force and the dollar-almighty view on value.”
These conclusions come from a “white paper” allegedly put out by the communist Kim regime, which accuses the United States “and other Western countries” of having fabricated multiple anti-communist movements around the world, including the anti-Russian Rose Revolution in Georgia and Orange Revolution in Ukraine.
The report also accuses President Donald Trump’s executive order on immigration from terror-prone countries of “discrimination against Muslims”: “Not a few African refugees were repatriated in shackles as criminals against their will.”
“It is due to the U.S. and the West’s reactionary external policy that sovereignty of countries are openly violated and extreme political chaos and disorder have been created to cause brutal violation of human rights in different parts of the world,” the North Korean state newspaper concludes.
North Korea routinely publishes “white papers” accusing the United States of triggering global instability. In March, a North Korean “white paper” called America “a human rights desert where even elementary human rights are not provided.”
The country also routinely threatens to destroy the entire United States with nuclear bombs. Tuesday was no different, with a column in Rodong Sinmun warning, “If the U.S. imperialists dare provoke the DPRK, failing to properly understand its military might and strategic position and its army and people’s fixed will to settle accounts with the U.S., they will face mercilessly annihilating retaliatory strike.”
Other news in the state newspaper, which has not yet addressed Warmbier’s death at all, includes “Respected Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un gave field guidance to the newly-built Dental Sanitary Goods Factory.”
Warmbier death was announced on Tuesday after returning a week ago from North Korea. He was arrested in Pyongyang last year and issued a televised forced confession to having torn down a communist propaganda poster in his hotel. In it, he was forced to thank North Korea for its humanitarian treatment of him and accuse the United States of paying him for committing the “crime.” He was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor.
Following his release on humanitarian grounds last week, North Korean officials reportedly claimed that Warmbier had contracted botulism shortly after his sentencing and had been in a coma for more than a year. American doctors treating him upon his return to Ohio say that there is no evidence of botulism, only of “extensive brain damage.”
The killing of an American by North Korean officials in this way is unprecedented. North Korea typically arrests U.S. citizens on false charges of criminal activity to use as bargaining chips in diplomacy with America, beating and torturing them but never endangering their lives.
“The treatment of Otto Warmbier is beyond the pale of North Korea’s usual standards,” Asia expert John Delury told the Associated Press. “I’m sure there are high-ranking North Koreans who regret what happened to Warmbier and who think this was a mistake. You’ve got to capitalize on this, and influence their internal debates to get them to recognize and acknowledge what happened.”
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