Cindy Warmbier, mother of the student who died after being held hostage in North Korea, made an emotional call for further sanctions against Kim Jong Un’s regime.
“I think if we don’t stand up to North Korea, it looks really bad,” said Warmbier during a conference on Friday. “They’re telling us what to do and what to say, and the only way to stand up to them that I know of are sanctions.”
She told reporters that the U.S. must not cease applying pressure against the regime in order to cease its aggressive behavior. The Warmbier family has supported bipartisan legislation that would force banks to cease business with North Korea or lose access to the U.S. financial system. Sens. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Chris Van Hollen of Maryland put the bill forward after her son’s death in June 2017, and reintroduced it in March.
“North Korea to me is a cancer on the earth,” said Warmbier. “And if we ignore this cancer, it’s not going to go away, it’s going to kill all of us.”
She expressed skepticism over the ongoing negotiations between the U.S. and Kim regime, which hurled insults at Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last month, questioning whether he should be leading negotiations.
“There’s a charade going on right now, it’s called diplomacy,” said Warmbier, questioning how it is possible to engage in true diplomacy with a regime that constantly lies.
Her son, Otto Warmbier, died after he was imprisoned by North Korea for nearly 18 months. He was apprehended by North Korean officials in 2016 while on a tour of the country after being accused of trying to steal a propaganda poster. Warmbier was repatriated to the U.S. in a vegetative state after falling into a coma. The circumstances surrounding his illness remain unclear.
“I swear the look in his eyes, which I didn’t know he was blind at the time, was absolute horror,” said Cindy Warmbier. “Horror, like he’d seen the devil. And he had, he was with the devil.”
She was joined by the family members of other abductees from South Korea, the U.S. and Japan at the conference, which was hosted by the Washington-based Hudson Institute. She noted that while she has been able to have some closure, “there’s still a lot of families that deserve to see their family members.”
“But unless we keep the pressure on North Korea, they are not going to change, and I am very afraid we’re going to let up on this pressure,” she said. “So I need everyone here to keep the pressure on everybody you can.”
The February summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un did not yield any steps toward the administration’s goal of denuclearizing the peninsula. Pompeo was undeterred by the North Korean regime remarks in April, and said he would continue to work toward future negotiations. Despite the breakdown in negotiations in February, Trump said he expects to meet with Kim again. A timetable for the next summit remains unclear.
