It would be pretty easy to make a case for not visiting North Korea, Dennis Rodman’s bromance with Kim Jung-un notwithstanding. So, it’s still sort of mystifying why anyone who doesn’t have to go there would. But we’re all glad, of course, that 85-year-old Korean War vet Merrill Newman was released and has returned home.
But here’s the point, whether we’re talking the hermit kingdom or Iran, whether we’re talking visiting a country where you advised its enemies or carelessly crossing a border into an arch adversary’s sovereign territory. The U.S. State Department doesn’t need to have important ongoing and delicate negotiations unnecessarily complicated by such incidents. It gives actual or perceived leverage to such countries–countries that matter from a national security perspective.