North Korea’s official KCNA news agency said Friday the country’s authorities had arrested a U.S. student who, under orders from Washington, had engaged in an unspecified “hostile act” after entering the country on a tourist visa.
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The group says they are assisting the U.S. State Department closely in this situation.
Young Pioneer Tours is based in China and specializes in trips to North Korea. University spokesman Anthony de Bruyn would only say that the school “has been in touch with Otto Warmbier’s family and will have no additional comment at this time”.
The Tribune said the latest arrest happens while U.S seeks rigid sanctions over North Korea’s latest nuclear test.
KCNA did not immediately give an English version of the student’s name. It did not elaborate. The University of Virginia’s online student directory lists Otto Frederick Warmbier as an undergraduate commerce student, and Wyoming City Schools near Cincinnati confirmed Otto Warmbier is a 2013 graduate.
“In addition to continuing political pressure to exhort the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) to improve human rights, it is also now imperative to pursue criminal responsibility of the DPRK leadership”, said Marzuki Darusman, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea.
The agency said his plan was to undermine the North’s system (government) with the assistance of the USA government.
In 2014, Pyongyang released three detained Americans. However, in December it reportedly sentenced a South Korea-born Canadian pastor to hard labor for life for subversion. Earlier this month, a Korean-American man told CNN in Pyongyang that he was being held by the state for spying. The U.S. State Department has warned against travel to the North, however, and visitors, especially those from America, who break the country’s sometimes murky rules risk detention, arrest and possible jail sentences, although most have eventually been released.
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Tensions are now running high on the Korean peninsula, as North Korea braces for fresh sanctions in the wake of the fourth nuclear test it carried out January 6.
