North Korean authorities took the man, identified as Kim Dong-chul, 62, to a hotel in Pyongyang, the North’s capital, to be interviewed exclusively by a CNN reporter, the network said.
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Kim said he started spying in 2013 on behalf of “South Korean conservative elements” who “injected me with a hatred toward North Korea”.
Kim said he lived in Fairfax, Va., before moving to Yanji, a Chinese town near the border with North Korea, in 2001.
North Korea has revealed another detainee on the same day that Korean-Canadian pastor Lim Hyun-soo was interviewed by CNN.
Lim has been sentenced to a life of hard labour for what he claims is speaking badly about the rulers of the country, where political dissent is forbidden.
“I wasn’t originally a laborer, so the labor was hard at first”, said Lim, his head shaven and wearing a gray prison outfit with the number 036.
“But now I’ve gotten used to it”.
The charges against Lim lacked specifics, but Lim said it may have had to do with his open criticism of the North’s three generations of leaders.
“The United States and South Korea are continuously and closely having discussions on additional deployment of strategic assets”, the spokesman, Kim Min-seok, said.
Kim, however, stated that his spying activities were tied exclusively to South Korea, never to the United States.
“The issues of North Korea’s governance and judicial system are well-known and we are very concerned about someone being sentenced to life in North Korea”, he said.
In Sunday’s New York Times, the North Korea expert and former diplomat Joel Wit made the argument that, despite the freakish and buffoonish portrayal of the country in USA media coverage and pop culture, we really ought to be taking Kim’s regime more seriously. Kim has said the nuclear program is defensive and created to prevent a U.S.-led invasion. He has traveled to North Korea around 100 times to establish an orphanage and nursery home.
Westerners held previously in North Korea have said their confessions were given under pressure from the state.
“There are lots of “self-sustaining” pastors preaching at the China-North Korea border area, funded by individuals”. “I pray for North and South Korea to be unified”. “I think the main way to do that is with a peace treaty”. “I am longing to see them again, and my congregation”, he said.
Americans Kenneth Bae and Matthew Miller were released by Pyongyang in November 2014.
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Kim’s claims are unconfirmed; US officials said they were aware of reports, but wouldn’t comment on Kim’s citizenship status.
