Kim Dong Chul, center, a US citizen detained in North Korea, escorted from the court room after his trial Friday, April 29, 2016, in Pyongyang, North Korea.
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Kim, who has said he was a naturalised American citizen, had confessed to committing espionage under the direction of the United States and South Korean governments and apologised for his crimes, according to the North’s KCNA news agency. The statement comes a day after South Korean and USA officials said that two suspected medium-range missiles were launched by Pyongyang, but failed the test.
According to the prosecutor, Kim was running a trade company in Rason, a special economic zone in the DPRK.
Meanwhile, US student Frederick Otto Warmbier was also convicted of subversion and sentenced to 15 years’ hard labour in March, despite only admitting to the theft of a propaganda banner while staying in a hotel in Pyongyang.
Kim was born in South Korea but emigrated to Fairfax, Virginia, and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1987.
This week, not one, but two North Korean intermediate-range ballistic missiles exploded shortly after launch, a US official briefed on the latest intelligence in the region told Fox News on Thursday.
Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) had previously said he was arrested while carrying a USB stick with stolen “nuclear and military secrets”.
Some experts had called North Korea would wait until it figured out before trying another, an activity that may take months what went wrong in the preceding start.
On Thursday, President Park Geun-hye of South Korea said there were signs that another nuclear test by North Korea might be imminent.
North Korea said the United States would “die a dog’s death” if it continued to engage in “rising tensions” at the truce village of Panmunjom.
About 28,000 USA troops have been stationed in South Korea to tackle the latest aggression from North Korea, which conducted its fourth nuclear test in January and a rocket launch in February. The North is also holding a Korean-Canadian Christian pastor, who is serving a life sentence for subversion. North Korea is banned by the Security Council from testing ballistic missiles.
He was jailed for 15 years in prison with hard labour after admitting stealing propaganda material.
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“The beginning of the year is particularly strategic, typically a lot of things happen at that point: the joint military exercises between USA and ROK (South Korea), that occurs and this year in particular, Worker’s Party congress which hasn’t happened since 1980”, Jasper Kim said.
