Journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee Are Coming Home

Good news today about journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee, as word comes from Pyongyang that the North Korean dictator Kim Jung Il has ordered their release.

As  fellow American female journalist and as a human being I am thrilled to hear this. As an analyst of geopolitics it does not assuage my underlying concerns about Kim Jong Il. While we Americans should applaud his decision and be thrilled for our citizens’ release, it would be wise to keep in mind this is likely a cynical move on the part of the North Korean dictator to set the stage for future aggression on a much broader scale.

Perhaps it is no surprise the women will be released to travel home with former President Bill Clinton, whose policies toward North Korea set the stage for what we face today: he gave them a great deal of money and other perks in an exchange for a promise to halt their nuclear program, whereupon Kim Jung Il turned around and used those funds to expand that same nuclear program, while starving his people. George W. Bush worked with the international community to try to pressure North Korea, but it would appear his policies failed as well.

This goodwill humanitarian gesture, much as we appreciate it, must not be confused with actual compliance on the part of the Kim Jong Il regime in halting North Korea’s nuclear program or in treating the people of North Korea, many of whom are being systematically starved to death, with humanity.

Kim Jong Il remains one of the worst violators of human rights, on a mass scale, on the planet today, overseeing a massive kwan li so prison system in which such atrocities as systematic starvation, imprisonment of dissidents’ families into the third generation, and systematic, deliberate murder of infants, have been well-documented.

President Obama and the rest of our nation would be wise to remember the character of the man we are dealing with.

And be extremely thankful these women are coming home.

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