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Hyeon Soo Lim

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Canadian Christian pastor Hyeon Soo Lim has been sentenced by North Korea’s Supreme Court to a life term of hard labor for “crimes against the state”.

Hyeon Soo Lim, 60, was arrested in Pyongyang after he traveled there in January for humanitarian work.

The Toronto-based pastor, who is of South Korean origin, was shown at a news conference earlier confessing to a plot to overthrow the government and set up a “religious state”.

North Korea bans religious activity.

The authorities periodically detain foreigners for religious or missionary activity and similar cases have seen staged public confessions from prisoners.

Photo YouTube

Photo YouTube

Hyeon Soo Lim was sentenced after a 90-minute trial at the North Korean Supreme Court.

He was convicted of joining the US and South Korea in an anti-North Korea human rights “racket” and fabricating and circulating false propaganda materials tarnishing the country’s image.

The pastor was also accused of funding and helping “defectors” to escape, in some cases through Mongolia.

Hyeon Soo Lim entered and left the court in handcuffs flanked by two public security officers in uniform, the Associated Press reports.

The handcuffs were removed in court during the trial, it adds. The pastor kept his head bowed most of the time and answered questions in a subdued tone.

Hyeon Soo Lim and his colleagues traveled to Pyongyang on January 31st as part of a humanitarian mission. His family said it was to support a nursing home, nursery and orphanage.

The pastor, who heads the Light Korean Presbyterian Church, had made numerous humanitarian aid missions to North Korea for nearly two decades, the Church said.

He was detained in February and in July a KCNA report said he had given a press conference in Pyongyang where he admitted to using humanitarian work as a “guise” for “subversive plots and activities in a sinister bid to build a religious state”.

Hyeon Soo Lim also reportedly admitted to giving lectures that “North Korea should be collapsed with the love of <<God>>”, and to helping the US and South Korea to aid North Korean defectors.

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Canadian pastor Hyeon Soo Lim has failed to return from a humanitarian visit to North Korea, an official from his church says.

Reverend Hyeon Soo Lim of the Light Korean Presbyterian Church in Toronto, 60, travelled to North Korea on January 31 and was due to leave on February 4.

Hyeon Soo Lim has made hundreds of trips to North Korea, where he helps oversee a nursing home, a nursery and an orphanage, his church said, but this was the longest he had been out of touch.Canadian pastor Hyeon Soo Lim missing after North Korea trip

Canadian officials said they were in contact with Rev. Hyeon Soo Lim’s family and had offered consular assistance.

North Korea periodically detains visiting foreign nationals, particularly those linked to religious activity – which is restricted inside the country.

US citizens are generally held the longest. North Korea is seen as using them to try to extract political concessions.

Citizens from nations of less political importance to Pyongyang can be freed quickly. An Australian missionary detained in February 2014 for leaving Christian material at a tourist site was swiftly deported.

Church officials initially wondered whether Rev. Hyeon Soo Lim had become caught up in a 21-day quarantine North Korea said it was imposing on travelers potentially exposed to Ebola.

Canada advises against all travel to North Korea and has no diplomatic presence in the country.

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