When Americans are determined (Lee Yee)
There are many things in the world that ordinary people find impossible to accomplish, yet if some put their heart into it, things may not turn out to be all that impossible.
I saw an essay on a mainland site two months ago that was titled “The World’s Most Powerful Parents, Two Against a Country”. It was quickly deleted, but relevant information could be found on overseas sites.
The parents here were the parents of Otto Frederick Warmbier, a college student who was imprisoned and tortured to death by North Korea more than four years ago. Otto went to North Korea on a short trip in December 2015. As he was leaving, he was accused of attempting to steal a political propaganda poster from a hotel in Pyongyang, and was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor. On June 13, 2017, North Korea suddenly released him on “humanitarian grounds”, he turned to the US in a vegetative coma. A week later, he died.
Otto’s father, Fred Warmbier, described the state of his son on his return to the US, and was determined that Otto was severely injured from being tortured in North Korea. His mother, Cindy, said that North Korea only released him because “they did not want him to die on their land”.
Otto’s parents filed a lawsuit in the US courts and demanded compensation from North Korea. The family ran a large-scale metal processing company that was on Forbes’ list in 2015. They were not short of money, and only wanted a revenge with the ask for compensation. In the US legal system, suing a country will be blocked by sovereign immunity, except when the country is classified as a terrorist country by the US. At that time, North Korea was not on the list. So the couple went onto media platforms, again and again, to speak about their son’s death, and the huge blow it was to their family. In the US where family values are cherished, they received great sympathy from the civilians, to the Congress, and to the White House. In November 2017, Trump added North Korea to the list of terrorist countries. In April 2018, the court accepted the lawsuit. On December 24 of the same year, the US Federal Court ruled that North Korea owed Otto Warmbier’s parents US$510.13 million.
This was great, but did it do anything? Would a rogue nation like North Korea acknowledge it? Many felt that this is an unenforceable ruling that was no different from a sheet of scratch paper.
However, the Warmbiers launched an operation to trace North Korea’s global assets. The media called it “the crusade of the Warmbiers”. The first installment of the compensation arrived soon enough. In April 2018, a cargo ship that belonged to North Korea was detained in Indonesia for violating the UN sanctions on the transportation of coal. In the year after, M/V Wise Honest, the second-largest single-hull bulk carrier registered in North Korea, was forfeited in the US, sold in September 2019 on orders of a US federal judge to compensate the Warmbiers.
On May 11, 2020, the US Federal Court ordered all relevant US banks to provide the parents with detailed information, including North Korea’s account number and holder’s address. While it is unclear the total amount of North Korea’s hidden overseas assets, what was discovered was that within the US alone was US$74.36 million.
The couple started a bank investigation into the deposits of senior North Korean officials in the US, and actually found three North Korean funds totaling US$23.89 million from three banks. The money will no doubt go to the Warmbiers.
Though a closed country, the Kim regime still has large deposits overseas. After all, North Korea still needs certain necessities imported from overseas.
It is highly doubtful that North Korea’s overseas assets would exceed US$510.13 million, but the couple persists and would not give up. Three years in, their determination for revenge has not diminished. They even make use of the global Jewish network to search for secret North Korean funds hidden around the world. “Our goal is to make North Korea pay for our son’s death,” the couple said.
One couple to bring this much headache to the whole country of North Korea. This is bigger than money, this is the dissemination of bad reputation.
The moral of this story is that if Americans are determined to pursue their trace for accountability, they would give it all and never surrender. If a country is listed as a terrorist country or criminal group, there will be no sovereign immunity for the country to be prosecuted; if any person is added to the US sanction list, tough luck to you. Some things that may seem unlikely, as long as one is determined, success may not be out of the question. Although justice is often no match for absolute powers, justice must be upheld, just like the Warmbiers.
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