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.
A US YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said yesterday. Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. South Korean authorities indicted Somali — whose real name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael — in 2024 on public order violations and obstruction of business, and banned him from leaving the country. “The court has sentenced him to six months in
Former Lima mayor Rafael Lopez Aliaga, a Peruvian presidential hopeful, gathered hundreds of supporters in Lima on Tuesday and gave authorities 24 hours to annul the first round of the country’s election over allegations of fraud. Lopez Aliaga is locked in a tight three-way race with two other candidates for second place in Sunday’s vote. The election runner-up wins a ticket to June’s presidential run-off against front-runner Keiko Fujimori. “I am giving them 24 hours to declare this electoral fraud null and void,” said Lopez Aliaga, surrounded by a crowd of several hundred supporters. “If it is not declared null and void tomorrow,
PAPAL RETORT: Pope Leo told reporters that he has ‘no fear, neither of the Trump administration nor speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel’ US President Donald Trump has feuded with Pope Leo XIV over the Iran conflict — setting off an unholy row that could have serious political implications for the Republican leader back in the US. Trump has drawn barbs even from some allies over the attacks on the US-born pontiff, who has criticized the Trump administration over its immigration crackdown, the intervention in Venezuela and the Iran war. The president risks alienating the religious right in November’s crucial US midterm elections. So far the unprecedented clash between the leader of the most powerful military on Earth and the head of the world’s 1.4 billion
A 16-year-old boy has been charged with murder and aggravated sexual abuse in Florida in the death of his 18-year-old stepsister on a Carnival Cruise ship, the US Department of Justice said on Monday. Timothy Hudson was initially charged in February and subsequently indicted on March 10, but the breadth of the case was not known until a seal was lifted on Friday last week, weeks after US District Judge Beth Bloom in Miami said that he would be prosecuted as an adult at the request of the government. Anna Kepner had been traveling on the Carnival Horizon ship in November last
RSS