Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
North Korean Defector Most Powerful Moment of Perhaps Any SOTU
Last night President Trump appeared downright presidential. While there is plenty of partisan bickering that can (and is) being done regarding the policy proposals and political points raised, the stories of individual guests of the First Family were some of the most powerful in recent memory.
There was a couple — a police officer and his wife — who adopted a heroin-addicted baby born to a woman the officer met on a patrol. When President Trump introduced the family, the adoptive mother, Rebecca Holets, removed the cover she was using to nurse the baby in order to be honored by those present in the gallery.
Next came President Trump’s focus on the evils of the North Korean regime. Directly behind the Holet family, a couple who had just brought a child into their home, were Fred and Cindy Warmbier, parents mourning the loss of theirs. Their son Otto was a young man killed by North Korean authorities after he was held captive after he tried to exit the country at the end of a group trip he took there.
Otto Warmbier’s parents at #sotu. Otto was imprisoned & killed by the brutal North Korean regime. pic.twitter.com/H37nKtsMO4
— Rita Panahi (@RitaPanahi) January 31, 2018
The Warmbiers, likely as naive as their son when he left for North Korea, spent 17 months in agony; wondering how their son was, if he was even alive. Then came word he would be coming home but the news quickly turned agonizing. He wouldn’t be flying on a commercial flight home but on a medical plane. He arrived in the United States in a coma, before dying six days later.
They were interviewed about their son on CNN about what the North Koreans did to their son:
After his return it was reported: “The parents of Otto Warmbier, a young man who was detained in North Korea for more than a year and died soon after being released, said on Tuesday he was “jerking violently,” howling and “staring blankly” when he returned home on a medical flight.”
The juxtaposition between two parents sobbing after their son was brutally tortured by the regime and a happy, smiling adoptive family with their newborn was jarring. But then, came the kicker: The story of North Korean defector Ji Seong-ho. President Trump told his story, in what was perhaps the most powerful moment in a State of the Union in memory:
The Washington Post’s Anna Fifield profiled Ji Seong-ho’s powerful escape story. And just look at this photo:
With Rebecca Holet looking on smiling with her baby, the Warmbier parents sobbing, and Ji Seong-ho, defiantly holding up his crutches, which transported him across China and Southeast Asia into freedom.
There are thousands of others like Ji Seong-ho; mothers and their babies, children, men, women, and the elderly. For the last several years, I have been fundraising for an organization that helps these individuals, who have managed to escape North Korea over the North Korean-Chinese border, to freedom in South Korea, where they automatically receive citizenship. Liberty in North Korea ushers these brave souls from China, through Southeast Asia; a 10,000-mile journey because the route over the DMZ is impossible. This past year alone, mostly on Twitter, I raised over $60,000, and this summer I will be writing (and blogging!) a trip to South Korea to meet some of the refugees LiNK has managed to ferry to freedom over the years.
President Trump should be applauded, loudly, for bringing the plight of these refugees into the hearts and minds of the American people.
Published in Foreign Policy
These are the kind of people I’d grant an immediate path to US citizenship to, not those who cross our border illegally. If they don’t want citizenship, then I’d grant sanctuary, until a time came when they could safely return to their native land.
What a wonderful thing you are doing. Thank you. I hope that the people in North Korea hear of your efforts.
As a Trump skeptic, I just have two things to say:
Thank you, Bethany, for a good Post.
Why?
they can ask for asylum in the U.S. if they want it; they were never included in this refugee ban when you get into the fine print because of that; but the vast majority want to settle in SK because the transition is so much easier. it’s already incredibly hard to adjust to the free world, adding in the language and culture on top is a lot for refugees to handle.
I went to their gala in LA this year and met several refugees and heard from one that they’ve told family still in NK about a Jewish white woman raising money for LiNK. It’s incredible.
And thank you!!
Why what?
Why was it necessary to remove the cover she was using to nurse the baby in order to be honored.
When the time came to be recognized, Mrs. Holets removed the covering because she assumed, rightly I believe, that people wanted to see the child.
good lord of course.
Bethany,
The scale of the abuse is really astounding. A variety of presumably neutral Human Rights organizations have documented the mercilessness of the regime. These abuses are way past just referring to N Korea as an “illiberal” government. This is on the scale of a government committing genocide against its own people.
Thanks for your post.
Regards,
Jim
Why does it matter?
Don’t women usually remain “covered” when nursing an infant in public? I believe they used to.
@basilfawlty
Er, babies can be interrupted; they don’t hang on like bear traps and blankies are more for helping the baby to be less distracted, especially if no flesh got flashed. But unless my insight into this is, er, fawlty….if this is an adopted child not added to the family right after a natural unrelated pregnancy, she would have been bottle feeding it. Someone correct me if women can be wet nurses just any old time. And whether or not she had such a rare endowment, she might not want the moment to spotlight herself or the feeding event rather than the whole family unit and husband’s contribution. The after event questioning would have surely been “why did she keep the baby covered?”
By the way – tangentially – did anybody else notice that comments on Melania’s clothes were why did she wear “suffragette white” to the speech, but if she had worn black it would have of course been signaling solidarity with the Me Too movement? Just like she copied Jackie Kennedy with the powder blue inaguration ceremony suit. That Melania, foiling PDT at every fashion turn.
So no breast was exposed to the millions during the SOTU? I certainly hope you’re correct. Once I learned that Justice Ginsburg would not be attending, I lost all interest in watching the event myself.
Do a little research. She has had 4 children and probably nursed them, the milk glands can be stimulated to function. Takes a little doing, but if a woman really wants to nurse, she can. Also, we don’t know when she stopped nursing her last child and as far as we know, she may be nursing two of them. Both my daughters nursed their babies between 1 and 2 years for each child. Seven children between the two of them.
Look, I don’t even know why it was mentioned in the article. Maybe it means something to women who’ve nursed. I don’t know. The only thing I’ve ever nursed is a beer bottle . . .
@stad
I tried to google around for something to go on, but couldn’t find anything better than an image in this article (half way down below husband with baby closeup) with the lady semi-facing camera, and which just doesn’t look like a helpfully engineered top of dress. So the mystery will continue and I will bow out:
http://people.com/human-interest/police-officer-who-adopted-homeless-addicts-baby-says-birth-mother-is-now-40-days-sober/