SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea said on Friday that it had detained an American citizen on charges of committing “hostile acts against the republic,” a crime punishable by years in prison in the isolated country.
The North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency said the American, Bae Jun-ho, had entered the country on Nov. 3 through a port city near the Russian border. Human rights activists in South Korea said they believed Mr. Bae to be Kenneth Bae, 44, who they said earlier this month had been detained in the North.
The North Korean report said, without elaborating, that an investigation had established Mr. Bae’s guilt and that he had confessed. It said he had been allowed to meet with officials from the Swedish Embassy in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang. The Swidish Embassy intervenes on Washington’s behalf on issues involving American citizens in North Korea. Washington has no diplomatic relations with the North.
The charge comes at a sensitive time for Washington, which is trying to rally support for a new round of penalties against North Korea over its launch of a long-range rocket earlier this month. In recent years, North Korea has detained several Americans, in some cases agreeing to let them go only after high-profile American figures visited Pyongyang to seek their release. Analysts have suspected North Korea of trying to use such arrests to counter Washington’s diplomatic pressure over its nuclear and missile programs and force it to engage with the regime.
The human rights activists in South Korea said Mr. Bae ran a travel company that specialized in taking tourists and prospective investors to North Korea. Mr. Bae, a naturalized American citizen born in South Korea, was detained after escorting five European tourists into the North, said Do Hee-youn, who heads the Citizens’ Coalition for the Human Rights of North Korean Refugees, based in Seoul. The Europeans were allowed to leave the country, Mr. Do said.
The South Korean daily newspaper Kookmin Ilbo earlier cited an unnamed source as saying that Mr. Bae was detained after North Korean security officials found a computer hard disk in his possession that they believed contained sensitive information about the country. Mr. Do said that Mr. Bae may have taken pictures of North Korean orphans he wanted to help and that the authorities may have considered that an act of anti-North Korean propaganda.
In 2009, North Korea arrested two American journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, and sentenced them to 12 years of hard labor for illegally entering the North and committing “hostile acts against the Korean nation.” But the women were pardoned and released five months later, after former President Clinton visited Pyongyang and met with Kim Jong-il, North Korea’s leader at the time.
In 2010, North Korea released Robert Park, a Korean-American Christian activist who entered the country in December 2009 to draw international attention to the North’s poor human rights record. Another American, named Aijalon Mahli Gomes, was arrested the same year in North Korea and was sentenced to eight years of hard labor for illegal entry and “hostile acts.” He was freed after former President Carter visited Pyongyang and, according to North Korea, “apologized” for the man’s crime.
North Korea Says It Has Detained an American Citizen
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North Korea Says It Has Detained an American Citizen
