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Hmmm. . . fly on Asiana Airlines to North Korea and talk about the Korean War to a Korean . . .

The flight Mr. Newman was likely not Asiana Airlines - as a South Korean air carrier, they do not maintain a flight route to the DPRK. Other media reports states he was removed from an Air Koryo aicraft, which is the DPRK National Carrier. The only other international airlines that fly out of Pyongyang on a regular basis is MIAT Mongolian Airlines and Air China.

Given that the US and North Korea do not have diplomatic relations established, and every couple of months North Korea’s leadership makes claims about going to war with either South Korea, or the US, one has to wonder why North Korea has not been quarantined by the US government, restricting travel by US citizens to that country for their own safety.

Given the clearly unreasonable restrictions on personal freedom of tourists—not to mention the North Koreans themselves—until the Kim family rule has been replaced with a more civilized form of government, this is really no place for Americans to be wandering around.

I read something somewhere that made sense to me. The North Korean Government, if you can call such imbeciles a government, looks for ways to create crises. These "crises" are carefully arranged to elicit concessions in their favor by Western officials.

If you want to understand North Korea, I recommend a book entitled "Nothing to Envy" by Barbara Demick.

Maybe Obama should stop worrying about using taxpayer dollars to drum up money for the Democrat Party in SF this week and head to the Democratic Peoples Republic of North Korea, And bring our Veteran home.

People should use their brains and not travel to hostile locations and risk forcing the US government to waste valuable resources and political leverage to save them.

My heart goes out to Mr. Newman and his family, and I will pray for his release. I will also pray that other Korean War veterans, and Americans in general, will not put themselves in harms way by traveling to North Korea - a well-known and hostile adversary.