If you’ve ever had the opportunity to tour a California state penitentiary, you know the drill. Before guards will let you in, they make you sign your life away.
Not exactly, but it goes something like this. You sign an acknowledgement that if you are held hostage by a prisoner, the guard will do nothing to win your release. In other words, you enter the prison at your own risk.
That’s how Kenneth Bae must feel. The American from Washington State has been held captive by North Korea for “crimes against the state.” Bae has been held captive longer than any recent American. In the past, a high American official such as former Presidents Clinton and Carter have gone to North Korea to take American prisoners home.
Not this time. Bae last week was hospitalized after losing some 50 pounds and enduring months of hard labor. A video taped interview just released shows him pleading with the White House to send an envoy over to negotiate his release. He has written letters home urging his family in Washington to take a more active role in getting him home.
Yet, there’s no sign the United States plans to send anyone to North Korea. The Washington Times reports the United States has no plans at all regarding Bae.
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“I don’t have any plans or anything to announce at this point,” State Department spokeswoman Marie Harff said.
“I’m not going to venture a guess as to whether that’s something we would consider.”
Apparently the United States doesn’t want to do anything that might give the North Korean regime a boost.
Bae had been in North Korea in two capacities– working both as a Christian missionary and a tour guide. Unlike a visit to a California State Prison, no one asked him to sign his life away.
But that’s exactly how Bae must feel, rapidly losing weight sitting in a hospital bed wondering if his country and his fellow Americans have forgotten him.
