U.S. Vice President Mike Pence talks with North Korean defectors at a memorial for inter-Korean sea skirmishes in Pyeongtaek. [Yonhap News Photo]
SEOUL, Feb. 09 (Aju News) -- Accompanied by the father of Otto Warmbier who died last year after being set free from a North Korean prison, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence highlighted the brutality of dictatorship in the North Friday as a high-level delegation from Pyongyang made a landmark cross-border trip to attend the Olympic opening ceremony.
Before attending the opening ceremony, Pence paid tribute to the victims of inter-Korean sea skirmishes in 1999 and 2002 at a memorial at a naval base in the southwestern port city of Pyeongtaek and met with North Korean defectors.
"The cruel dictatorship of (North Korea) is little more than a prison state," Pence said, praising the bravery of the North Korean defectors. "Across the line of provocations, you fled for freedom. I want to say that the American people stand with you."
The session was attended by Fred Warmbier, the father of an American student who was arrested for stealing a political propaganda sign from a Pyongyang hotel and sentenced to 15 years of hard labor. Warmbier returned to his Ohio home in a coma last year but died several days later.
"As people testified, it is a regime that imprisons, tortures and impoverishes its citizens and I can assure your witness of that truth will be heard across the world," Pence said before inspecting the wreckage of a South Korean warship in 2010. Seoul blamed a North Korean submarine for torpedoing the warship and the incident froze cross-border exchanges and trade.
The vice president urged North Korean to "permanently" abandon its nuclear and ballistic missile ambitions.
reporter
Lim Chang-won
cwlim34@ajunews.com
