North Korea sentenced US citizen Kenneth Bae to 15 years hard labor yesterday for what it said were crimes against the state — a move that will likely see him used as a bargaining chip in talks with Washington.
Bae, 44, was born in South Korea, but is a naturalized US citizen and attended the University of Oregon. According to US media, he most recently lived in the Seattle suburb of Lynnwood.
A North Korean defector said Bae would likely serve his sentence in a special facility for foreigners, not in one of the repressive state’s forced labor camps. More than 200,000 people are incarcerated in these camps, beaten and starved, sometimes to death, according to human rights bodies.
Photo: AFP
Bae’s sentencing comes after two months of saber-rattling by Pyongyang that saw North Korea threaten both the US and South Korea with nuclear war.
Bae is believed to be a devout Christian, according to human rights activists in South Korea, who say he may have been arrested for taking pictures of starving children, known as kotjebi, or “fluttering swallows.”
He was part of a group of five tourists who visited the northeastern North Korean city of Rajin in November and has been held since then.
Some media reports have identified Bae as the leader of the tour group and NK News, a specialist North Korea news Web site, said he was the owner of a company called Nation Tours that specialized in tours of northeast North Korea.
The reports could not be verified and North Korean state news agency KCNA did not list any specific charge other than crimes against the state, and used a Korean rendering of Bae’s name, Pae Jun-ho, when it reported the Supreme Court ruling.
“North Korea has shown their intention to use him as a negotiating card as they have done in the past,” said Cheong Seong-chang, senior fellow at the Sejong Institute, a Seoul-based think tank.
Bae’s sentence was heftier than the 12 years handed down to two US journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, in 2009. It took a visit to Pyongyang by former US president Bill Clinton to secure their release.
North Korea appears to use the release of high profile US prisoners to extract a form of personal tribute, rather than for economic or diplomatic gain, often portraying visiting dignitaries as paying homage.
According to North Korean law, the punishment for hostile acts against the state is between five and 10 years hard labor.
“I think his sentencing was hefty. North Korea seemed to consider his acts more severe,” said Jang Myung-bong, honorary professor at Kookmin University in Seoul and a North Korea law expert.
Bae will not however be incarcerated in one of the North’s notorious slave labor camps, such as the one where defector Kwon Hyo-jin was locked up. There, Kwon said, prisoners were worked to death and often survived only by eating rats and snakes.
“If an American served jail together with North Korean inmates, which won’t happen, he could tell them about capitalism or economic developments. That would be the biggest mistake for North Korea,” said Kwon, a North Korean sentenced to one of its camps for seven years until 2007. He defected to South Korea in 2009.
“[Bae] would be sent to a correctional facility that only houses foreigners and was set up as a model for international human rights groups,” Kwon said.
It was not known if Bae had been taken to jail immediately.
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