Trump got detained Americans back from North Korea For Biden | For Biden it won't be so easy

Trump got detained Americans back from North Korea For Biden
it wont be so easy

WASHINGTON — Weeks before a planned summit with Kim Jong Un in 2018, a gleeful Donald Trump welcomed back three detained Americans whose release his administration had secured from the reclusive country of North Korea.

“Frankly, we didn’t think it was going to happen and it did,” Trump said at the time.

For Biden, it won't be so easy. On Tuesday, Pvt. 2nd Class soldier Travis King, ditched a tour group to the Demilitarized Zone and bolted into North Korea, where he was last seen being taken into custody by officials. The disgraced soldier was being sent back to the U.S. to be kicked out of the Army but headed for the fortified nation instead.
King is the latest person during Biden's first term in office to be taken into custody by a hostile nation. While the bizarre circumstances surrounding King's arrest differ vastly from women's basketball player Brittney Griner or Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, his detention has once again put the spotlight on the president's ability to bring imprisoned Americans home.

Negotiating King's release will be an uphill battle precisely because North Korea has rejected previous offers from his administration for unconditional talks, experts say. North Korea has a history of attempting to leverage detainees to extract concessions. To complicate matters, relations are at an all-time low as tensions in the region have surged over North Korea’s ballistic missile launches.

"Now it's up to a negotiation. And unfortunately, we're seeing this so much now with Russia and China and Iran, that we're having to swap our prisoners for people that do a lot more egregious violations. We don't have a lot of leverage over them," House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul told

That, the Republican congressman from Texas said, "Or they're going to try to cut a deal and get something in return."

Biden has relied on prisoner swaps on multiple occasions to bring home detained Americans.

One such exchange, in which the U.S. handed over convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, led to Griner's release. But the deal wasn't a solid win for Biden. The president drew condemnation for his failure to secure the release of a former Marine, Paul Whelan who has been held in a Russian prison on espionage charges since 2018.

Biden said last week that he was willing to entertain a prisoner swap to secure WSJ reporter Gershkovich's release from Russia.

“I'm serious about doing all we can to free Americans being illegally held in Russia or anywhere else for that matter,” Biden said.

The prisoner releases that took place under Trump – including of Kim Dong Chul, Kim Hak-song and Kim Sang Duk prior to the Singapore summit – happened in part because North Korea wanted to engage.