North Korea said yesterday it would charge an American detained last November with crimes against the nation, amid reports he was engaged in missionary work.
A man identified as Jun Young-su has been investigated “for committing a crime against the DPRK [North Korea] after entering it,” the official news agency said without specifying the offence.
“He admitted his crime in the course of investigation,” it said, adding officials were preparing to bring charges.
The agency said Washington had been told of the arrest and Swedish diplomats, who represent US interests in Pyongyang, had visited the detainee.
The US State Department disclosed the detention on Tuesday and confirmed Swedish diplomats had been given access. It gave no details of the individual, but appealed for his release on humanitarian grounds.
A source in Seoul familiar with North Korean affairs identified the man as a Korean-American businessman in his 60s who was detained for missionary work.
The man, who attends a church in Orange County, California, traveled frequently to the North disguising himself as a trader, the source said, confirming South Korean media reports.
The source said the man was arrested right after the North’s bombing of a South Korean border island last November that killed four people and sent cross-border tension soaring.
“It looks like the North had been watching the missionary for quite some time and arrested him for a political bargaining chip at what it thought was a suitable time to take advantage of him,” the source said.
It was the third apparent case in less than a year of a US Christian activist being detained in the North.
Missionary Robert Park was held on Christmas Day 2009, after walking across the border to make a one-man protest about human rights violations. He was freed in February last year after the North said he expressed “sincere repentance.”
On Jan. 25 last year, the North detained Aijalon Mahli Gomes for crossing the border illegally and sentenced him to eight years’ hard labor. Gomes was said to be a devout Christian.
He was freed last August after former US president Jimmy Carter flew to Pyongyang to intercede.
Carter is due to visit the North again soon and Jo Sung-rae of the Seoul-based Christian activist group Pax Koreana predicted Carter would also secure the release of the latest detainee.
Carter has said he would try to revive stalled six-party talks on the North’s nuclear disarmament and address humanitarian woes during his visit to Pyongyang.
UN food agencies say more than 6 million people — a quarter of the North’s population — urgently need food aid.
The North will likely release Jun during Carter’s visit and use it to “press Washington to resume food aid and come forward to talking to Pyongyang,” said Park Young-ho, senior fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification.
“Carter can add another personal legacy of his own, and the North can brag about how much mercy it showed to the reckless American,” he said. “The series of charm offensives, usually involving former statesmen from overseas and aimed to ease tension caused by its own military threats, is a repetition of what we’ve seen over and over for years.”
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