In an exclusive interview for CNN, a man identified as 62-year-old Kim Dong Chul said that he was a resident of the United States who previously lived in Virginia before moving to the Chinese border city of Yanji in 2001.
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Mr Hyeon, who was 60 at the time of his arrest last February, also revealed an American citizen is being held by the state for spying, according to CNN in North Korea’s capital Pyongyang. In statements given through a North Korean official translator, Kim claimed that individuals in South Korea “injected me with a hatred towards North Korea”, and that “they asked me to help destroy the [North Korean] system and spread propaganda against the government”.
CNN reported that Kim was apprehended in October 2015 with a USB stick and camera he used for documenting military secrets.
Donald Trump has praised Kim Jong Un for the “amazing” way in which the North Korean despot has murdered his political rivals.
“I wasn’t originally a laborer, so the labor was hard at first”, Lim told CNN in Korean through an interpreter.
Even though Lim speaks and understands English, North Korea required he speak in Korean for the CNN interview, which was conducted in a Pyongyang hotel.
Lim was no stranger to North Korea, having led multiple aid missions to the country, involving work with orphanage houses, nursing homes and food processing factories.
A western priest serving a life sentence in North Korea’s labour camps spends eight hours a day completely alone doing back-breaking work digging holes, he has revealed.
In the CNN interview, Lim said he receives three meals a day and regular medical attention; his church has said Lim has “very high blood pressure”.
But while he continues to denigrate whole swathes of the population for following a religion, the billionaire reserved some praise for North Korea’s dictator.
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South Korea’s foreign ministry had no immediate comment on the report, Agence-France Press reports.
