When Rep. Martha McSally spent years training for a trip to North Korea, she did it inside of a cockpit of an A-10 protected with 3.8-centimeter-thick titanium armor.
Last week, McSally stepped into the Demilitarized Zone that separates North Korea and South Korea, to the Truce Village of Panmunjom, near where an armistice ended the Korean War in 1953. The retired Air Force colonel traveled with a complement of congressmen, including fellow Arizona Reps. Tom O’Halleran and David Schweikert.
McSally described buildings that still had bullet holes in them, saying some likely came from an incident last year when a North Korean soldier defected and dragged his body into South Korea after being shot.
“To see the line between freedom and tyranny to be so starkly drawn is a pretty remarkable experience,” McSally noted.
She said both armies are focused on the North.
“(The South Korean military forces) are looking north because that is where the threat is coming from and where it has come in the past,” she said.
The North Korean soldiers are also keeping an eye on the north because “they’re concerned about people trying to escape to freedom,” she said.
The delegation’s visit happened in the same place and a few hours before South Korean President Moon Jae-in met with the North’s Kim Jong Un.
McSally said the decision for peace is in the hands of the North Korean dictator, but he needs to fully commit to the “complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization of North Korea.”
“It is really up to Kim Jong Un,” McSally said. “It is a matter whether he is going to keep playing games while his people suffer. I pray Kim Jong Un takes advantage of this historic opportunity to give his people a better future.”
North Korea has a history of flirting with diplomacy to ease sanctions, she said, only to return to its goal of building a nuclear stockpile.
McSally said the supposed destruction of a nuclear test site last week simply “doesn’t count” as the country only allowed journalists to observe from a distance.
O’Halleran said he was hopeful that a combination of diplomacy and military strength would persuade the North Korean leader to denuclearize his military.
“It is important, now more than ever, that we continue to pressure Mr. Kim and his regime to decommission the nation’s nuclear facilities, end their quest to develop nuclear weapons, and address the rampant human rights violations that are happening in his country,” he said.
President Trump, McSally said, made the right decision to call off a historic diplomatic summit between the United States and North Korea.
“President Trump is not going to get played here, and Kim Jong Un was playing a game here,” she said.
McSally remained optimistic that a peace summit will go forward in the near future.
Statements from McSally and O’Halleran came a day after Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told reporters he doesn’t believe North Korea will abandon its nuclear program.
