Andray Abrahamian on 38 North explores the option of a travel ban in response to the murder of Otto Warmbier, and comes out somewhat against it:
More importantly, tourism has had a real impact on the class of people we need to connect with the most in the long term: middle and upper middle-class residents of Pyongyang. There has been a profound change in social attitudes among the community of citizens that are authorized to deal with foreigners in Pyongyang. In the past decade, there has been increased curiosity, cosmopolitanism, and open-mindedness among members of this group. In addition, these people have friends and friends of friends who also experience the outside world more, mostly through commercial ties with China. These people may not be able to change the country overnight, but they are its most important constituency for change, and in the long run, will become even more important.
Finally, tourism has been an extremely useful source of information for the community of Korea watchers. Tourists often identify and provide valuable insights into social and economic changes in a way that wasn’t possible before. Cutting off this source of information would be a loss for Korea analysts.
Tourism hasn’t been the engine for change that some hoped it might be, perhaps unrealistically, when North Korean officials began talking it up in the mid-1990s. But it is not without its benefits. Thus, any decision to try to curtail US or other tourism to North Korea should not be taken lightly. It would be a satisfying and justifiable moral rebuke and may somewhat reduce leverage that Pyongyang occasionally exploits in its relationship with the United States. It could also prevent the next Otto Warmbier from making a minor mistake that ends up being costly beyond words. However, it would also make people in an isolated place a little less connected to the outside world and harder to understand. Like so much when it comes to North Korea, every option has downsides.
I suppose this could be considered part of the strategic patience option pursued by the Obama Administration, giving the regime an opportunity to change while applying pressure that attempts to shape that change. Will the Trump Administration understand that? Will they still feel that the murder of Warmbier requires some sort of action that is more than giving North Korea the middle finger on Twitter?
And that metaphor spurs another thought. The Trump Administration’s loss of prestige has made the North Korean situation more dangerous because it’s more difficult to guess how the Kim regime monarchy will react to an insult from a country with a depressed prestige level, especially when the North Koreans Kim may perceive the North Korean prestige greatly enhanced due to their advancements in missile, nuclear, and computer technology. But I’m not sure who’s in greater danger – the United States or North Korea.
