North Korea announced yesterday it has sentenced a US man to eight years of hard labor for an illegal border crossing and an unspecified hostile act.
Aijalon Mahli Gomes “admitted all the facts” when he appeared at the central court in Pyongyang on Tuesday, the official Korean Central News Agency reported.
Representatives from the Swedish embassy, which represents US interests in North Korea, were allowed “as an exception” to attend the trial, it said.
Gomes, 30, from Boston, was formerly an English teacher in South Korea and described by colleagues as a devout Christian. He crossed the border from China on January 25, according to reports from Pyongyang.
The North also announced that Gomes was fined 70 million won, (US$700,000) at the North Korean trade bank’s official exchange rate.
He is the fourth US citizen accused of entering the hardline communist state illegally in little more than a year. Three previous offenders were pardoned and deported. Analysts said Gomes may also be freed as Pyongyang seeks to improve relations with Washington.
“The North is not going to hold him for eight years,” professor Kim Yong-hyun of Seoul’s Dongguk University said. “It is likely to suspend the implementation of the sentence and expel him as a goodwill gesture toward the US.”
A Seoul activist, Jo Sung-rae, said last month that Gomes had taken part in anti-Pyongyang rallies in South Korea and was moved to tears by accounts of rights abuses in the North.
Gomes crossed into the North one month after US missionary Robert Park walked into the country across a frozen border river from China on Christmas Day, calling on leader Kim Jong-il to quit because of rights abuses.
Jo said Gomes may have been inspired by Park’s example.
North Korea freed Park in February without putting him on trial. Its official news agency quoted him as saying he had been misled by false Western propaganda.
In March last year the North detained two female US television journalists for illegal entry and “hostile acts.”
It sentenced them to 12 years of hard labor but pardoned them when former US president Bill Clinton flew to Pyongyang in August and met Kim.
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
Japan is to downgrade its description of ties with China from “one of its most important” in an annual diplomatic report, according to a draft reviewed by Reuters, as relations with Beijing worsen. This year’s Diplomatic Bluebook, which Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s government is expected to approve next month, would instead describe China as an important neighbor and the relationship as “strategic” and “mutually beneficial.” The draft cites a series of confrontations with Beijing over the past year, including export controls on rare earths, radar lock-ons targeting Japanese military aircraft and increased pressure around Taiwan. The shift in tone underscores a deterioration
A retired US colonel behind a privately financed rocket launch site in the Dominican Republic sees the project as a response to China’s dominance of the space race in Latin America. Florida-based Launch on Demand is slated to begin building a US$600 million facility in a remote region near the border with Haiti late this year. The project is designed to meet surging demand for the heavy-lift rockets needed to put clusters of satellites into orbit. It is also an answer to China’s growing presence in the region, said CEO Burton Catledge, a former commander of the US Air Force’s 45th Operations
Germany is considering Australia’s Ghost Bat robot fighter as it looks to select a combat drone to modernize its air force, German Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius said yesterday. Germany has said it wants to field hundreds of uncrewed fighter jets by 2029, and would make a decision soon as it considers a range of German, European and US projects developing so-called “collaborative combat aircraft.” Australia has said it will integrate the Ghost Bat, jointly developed by Boeing Australia and the Royal Australian Air Force, into its military after a successful weapons test last year. After inspecting the Ghost Bat in Queensland yesterday,
RSS