North Korea said yesterday it had detained an American who entered the country illegally, after activists claimed that a 28-year-old from Arizona went to the country on a mission to call attention to the regime’s human rights abuses.
The American was being investigated after “illegally entering” the country through the North Korea-China border on Thursday, North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said in a two-line dispatch.
The report did not identify the American, but activists believe he is 28-year-old Christian missionary Robert Park, who they say slipped across the frozen Tumen River into North Korea from China on Christmas bearing letters calling for a change in North Korea’s leadership and an end to political prison camps.
South Korea’s Unification Ministry said it could not confirm that the person cited in the dispatch is Park but noted that it had no intelligence indicating that other Americans went into North Korea illegally in recent days.
North Korea is one of the most reclusive nations in the world, allowing few citizens beyond its borders and strictly regulating who is allowed in.
The detainment comes just months after North Korea freed two US journalists who had been arrested in March and sentenced four months later to 12 years of hard labor for trespassing and engaging in “hostile acts.”
The women were released in August to former US president Bill Clinton, who journeyed to Pyongyang to negotiate their freedom.
US State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters on Monday that the Swedish embassy in Pyongyang had offered to try to get information about Park for the US, which does not have diplomatic ties with North Korea.
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
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
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
RSS