North Korea sentenced a naturalized US citizen to 10 years in prison, South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported.
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Details of his alleged espionage and subversion were not immediately available.
Kim had confessed to carrying out espionage under the direction of the US and South Korean governments and issued an apology for his crimes.
Defense One reported that a US defense official said the Pentagon had no advance warning of North Korea missile launches, such as the firing of two Rodong missiles from a road mobile launcher on March 18. Before his arrest, Kim Dong-chul lived in China near the North Korean border for 15 years and frequented Rason.
“I think the strategy by DPRK is to collect possible assets for leverage and basically, playing a game of geopolitical poker, unveiling cards strategically when they have the most value”, he said, using an abbreviation for North Korea.
Kim was arrested in October and reportedly confessed to spying for the South Korean intelligence service.
The announcement, which comes at a time of elevated military tensions on the Korean peninsula, followed an even harsher sentence of 15 years hard labor passed last month on a U.S. student, Otto Warmbier, for stealing a propaganda banner from a tourist hotel in Pyongyang.
He was arrested on October 2, 2015 as he was receiving an SD card that contained photos of local markets in Rason and documents about the DPRK’s nuclear programs from a local resident in Rason whom he had bought off, said the prosecutor.
Photographs issued by the North’s state news agency showed Kim bowing and wiping away tears.
When former presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter traveled to Pyongyang to negotiate the release of American citizens it was portrayed in North Korean media as a sign of their strength. On Saturday, Pyongyang conducted a submarine-launched ballistic missile test. It’s an attempt to appear like a deliberate judicial process, though North Korea has no rule of law.
North Korea’s three Musudan missile launches, just days ahead of the seventh congress of its ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, is seen as an embarrassment for North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, who is trying to rack up achievements for the congress.
North Korea has previously handed down lengthy hard labor sentences to foreigners, though eventually freeing them before they served their full terms.
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Since its first nuclear test last January, North Korea has intensified its pursuit of nuclear and ballistic missiles.
