A Canadian businessman providing dental aid to North Koreans has been detained for more than two months, a newspaper reported on Wednesday.
Kim Je-yell, a Korean-born Canadian in his 50s, was detained in the remote northeast of the country on Nov. 3, the Toronto Star reported on its Web site, citing Kim's family and aid groups.
The news had not been announced earlier pending diplomat efforts to have him freed, it said. It cited the humanitarian group he worked for, Christian Aid, as saying he was held on charges related to "national security."
Foreign Affairs Canada did not comment on Kim's detention, but ministry spokesman Rodney Moore said that Ambassador to South Korea Ted Lipman was on a "routine, previously scheduled trip" to the North until today.
"Ambassador Lipman is there to discuss a range of issues, including denuclearization, inter-Korean relations, multilateral humanitarian assistance and human rights with North Korean officials," Moore said.
Kim lives in Edmonton. He had been bringing dental supplies and setting up clinics in North Korea for nearly a decade, the report said.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
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Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
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