OXON HILL, Maryland — CPAC attendees raucously cheered Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday when he harshly rebuked positive media coverage of North Korean Leader Kim Jong-Un’s sister at the Olympics.
“I think it’s important that every American knows who this person is and what she’s done,” Pence said of Kim Yo-jong.
From the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) stage Pence countered positive media coverage of Kim Yo-jong at the opening of the Olympics in South Korea, with details of her role as a “central pillar of the most radical and oppressive regime on the face of the planet. An evil family clique that brutalizes, subjugates, starves, and imprisons its 25 million people.”
“Even the United Nations reported that, in their words, the gravity, scale and nature of these violations would be a state that does not parallel in the contemporary world,” he continued.
The United States has sanctioned Kim Yo-jong specifically “for her role in abetting North Korea’s horrendous human rights abuses and crimes against humanity,” Pence told CPAC attendees. “People are routinely jailed and executed for the most minor acts of defiance.”
Vice President Pence brought up the story of American Otto Warmbier, who was jailed in North Korea, sustained major injuries and brain damage while in captivity there, and was returned to the United States shortly before he died. Warmbier’s father traveled with Pence to the Olympics in South Korea during the opening of the games. The two met with North Korean defectors while in South Korea.
During the opening ceremonies of the Olympics, Pence received negative media coverage over his choice to only stand and cheer for the U.S. Olympians and not when the North and South Korean delegations entered together. Several outlets painted Kim Yo-jong as a star of the opening of the Olympics, reporting that she outshined Pence.
Pence had a message for those outlets who dinged him and glorified the North Korean official:
“So for all of those in the media who think that I should have stood and cheered with the North Koreans, I say, the United States of America doesn’t stand with murderous dictatorships, we stand up to murderous dictatorships.
His words were met with overwhelming applause from the crowd that kept cheering as Pence continued his message, “And we will keep standing strong until North Korea stops threatening our country, our allies, or until they have ended their nuclear ballistic missiles once and for all.”
Follow Michelle Moons on Twitter @MichelleDiana
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