North Korea has announced it arrested a third American tourist last month for inappropriate activities.
A report on the KCNA news agency said the man had entered North Korea on April 29, but was detained as he was leaving the country.
The report said he has been questioned, but gave no more details. Japanese agency Kyodo said the tourist was held because he left a Bible at a hotel.
North Korea has announced it arrested a third American tourist last month for inappropriate activities.
If confirmed, North Korea would now be holding three US citizens.
US-Korean missionary Kenneth Bae was arrested in November 2012 and is serving 15 years of hard labour after being convicted of trying to overthrow the government.
In late April, KCNA said an American named Matthew Todd Miller had been taken into custody on April 10.
KCNA said he had torn up his tourist visa, shouting that he had “come to the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] after choosing it as a shelter”.
North Korea uses the arrested Americans as diplomatic bargaining chips.
Robel Phillipos, friend of the Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev who is accused of lying to FBI investigators, will be released on bail with house arrest, a federal judge has ruled today.
American citizen Robel Phillipos, 19, is to be freed on a $100,000 bond provided he wears an electronic monitoring bracelet and is confined to his home.
He and two other friends of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were charged last week with hindering the investigation.
Robel Phillipos faces up to eight years in prison if convicted.
Robel Phillipos, friend of the Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, will be released on bail with house arrest
He is accused of lying to investigators about visiting Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s dormitory at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth on April 18, three days after the bombings.
Azamat Tazhayakov and Dias Kadyrbayev, two other college friends, have been charged with conspiring to obstruct justice by taking a backpack with the remains of fireworks and a laptop from Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s dorm room before the FBI searched it.
None of the three men are implicated in the planning of the bombings.
In court documents, defense attorneys for Robel Phillipos said their client had nothing to do with the attack and was not a flight risk.
According to a resume filed with the court, Robel Phillipos was studying marketing and sociology at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, and was expected to graduate in 2015.
But the university has said he was not enrolled during the current semester.
In letters filed with the court, friends and family members described Robel Phillipos as peaceful and non-violent.
“I do not believe that my beloved Robel crosses the line intentionally to support or assist such a horrendous act against us the people of the USA,” his aunt, Zewditu Alemu, wrote.
“By nature he does not like violence.”
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US citizen Pae Jun-Ho, aka Kenneth Bae, will be tried soon on charges including attempting to overthrow North Korea’s government, state news agency KCNA says.
According to KCNA, Pae Jun-Ho has admitted the charges, without specifying when the verdict will be handed down.
Pae Jun-Ho, who is known in the US as Kenneth Bae, was held last year after entering North Korea as a tourist.
Kenneth Bae’s case comes at a time of high tension between Pyongyang and Washington.
This follows North Korea’s third nuclear test on February 12.
“The preliminary inquiry into crimes committed by American citizen Pae Jun-Ho closed,” the KCNA said in a report on Saturday.
“In the process of investigation he admitted that he committed crimes aimed to topple the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] with hostility toward it.”
“His crimes were proved by evidence,” the report added.
“He will soon be taken to the Supreme Court of the DPRK to face judgement.”
It is not clear what sort of sanction Pae Jun-Ho, 44, might face, although North Korea’s criminal code provides for life imprisonment or the death penalty for similar offences.
Pae Jun-Ho, who is known in the US as Kenneth Bae, was held last year after entering North Korea as a tourist
North Korea has arrested several US citizens in recent years, including journalists and Christians accused of proselytism. They have been released after intervention by senior American public figures.
Pae Jun-Ho, believed to be a tour operator of Korean descent, is the sixth American detained in North Korea since 2009.
Former US Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter as well as former UN Ambassador Bill Richardson have all been involved in mediation efforts to gain the release of previous American detainees.
In one of the most high-profile cases, Bill Clinton negotiated the release in 2009 of two US journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who had been found guilty of entering North Korea illegally.
“For North Korea, Bae is a bargaining chip in dealing with the US,” Koh Yu-hwan, a professor of North Korean Studies at Dongguk University in Seoul told Associated Press news agency.
“The North will use him in a way that helps bring the US to talks when the mood slowly turns toward dialogue,” he said.
Pae Jun-Ho was reportedly arrested in November after arriving in Rason – a special economic zone in the north-east of the country near the Russian border.
Washington has so far not publicly commented on the latest development.
The US and North Korea do not have diplomatic relations. The Swedish embassy in Pyongyang represents the US.
In a further sign of the continuing tension on the Korean peninsula, South Korea has begun withdrawing its remaining workers from the Kaesong joint industrial zone in North Korea.
Kaesong Industrial Complex, once considered a symbol of reconciliation, lies just north of the military demarcation line dividing the two Koreas.
South Korean officials said 126 people had left, with the final 48 expected home by Monday.
North Korea has already withdrawn its 53,000 workers and blocked access to the zone in response to joint South Korean and US military exercises.
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