The Pentagon is considering sending a team of U.S. military personnel to North Korea to search for the remains of American troops killed during the Korean War, Secretary of Defense James Mattis said Friday.
Speaking to reporters during an on-the-record briefing, Mattis said military officials are weighing such a mission following the return of what are believed to be the remains of American service members earlier that morning.
“That is certainly under consideration,” he said, according to Fox News national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin. “Absolutely.”
Q: Could you foresee sending US military personnel back into North Korea for the first time in years to conduct additional search missions.
MATTIS: "That is certainly under consideration. Absolutely." https://t.co/eFqtb3oTFI— Jennifer Griffin (@JenGriffinFNC) July 27, 2018
Mattis’s remarks came hours after a U.S. Air Force plane transporting the possible remains of 55 Americans killed during the Korean War landed at Osan Air Base in South Korea. – READ MORE
[divider][/divider]In early June of 2017, Trump-appointed U.S. special representative for North Korea policy Joseph Yun learned that Warmbier was unconscious. “I was completely shocked,” said Yun of learning the news. “I came back immediately, and I told Secretary Tillerson … and we determined at the time that we needed to get him and the other prisoners out as soon as possible, and I should contact Pyongyang and say I wanted to come right away.”
“When Trump learned of Otto’s condition, he doubled down on the order for Yun to rush to Pyongyang and bring Otto home,” says the report. “The North Koreans were unilaterally informed that an American plane would soon land in Pyongyang and that United States diplomats and doctors would get off.”
An anonymous State Department official said the president sounded like a “dad” when learning of the news. He was determined to retrieve Warmbier and bring him back to his parents as soon as humanly possible.
“The president was very invested in bringing Otto home,” the official told GQ. “Listening to him deliberate on this, he sounded to me a lot more like a dad.”
“The North Koreans said we could send a delegation to see Otto, but that we would have to discuss some of the conditions of getting him out once we got there,” explained Yun.
https://twitter.com/esaagar/status/1021756289951690753
The team was assembled to rescue Warmbier, and the official go-ahead from State was given by Friday afternoon. When the team landed in Pyongyang, they were met with a “busload of soldiers.”
“Yun engaged in several rounds of intense negotiations with North Korean officials, trying to win Otto’s freedom,” says the report, though he was met with resistance from the North Koreans. After finally getting a chance to see Warmbier, Yun was so shocked by the young man’s poor condition that he wasn’t immediately convinced that the person he was looking at was indeed Warmbier. – READ MORE
[give_form id=”79809″] [contentcards url=”https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/pentagon-considering-specialized-military-detail-north-korea/” target=”_blank”]