It says that a man it identified as Kim Dong Chul is being held by the Pyongyang government and that he had traveled extensively in recent years between China and North Korea and had made some trips to South Korea as well.
Advertisement
If true, Kim would be the only USA citizen held prisoner in North Korea, a fact not revealed until today.
Lim was detained early in 2015 while on what his church said was a humanitarian mission to a nursing home and orphanage that he had established in North Korea.
The interview with the news network took place in the presence of North Korean officials from a hotel in Pyongyang, where Kim is supposedly awaiting trial. If confirmed, Kim would be the first American to be detained since the North released three us citizens in 2014.
“If you look at North Korea, this guy, he’s like a maniac. OK?”
A 60-year-old Canadian pastor, jailed for life with hard labour in North Korea, spends eight hours a day, six days a week digging holes in an orchard in a prison camp where he is the sole inmate.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un maintains that last Wednesday’s test was of a thermonuclear weapon, and says that its nuclear weapons program is a matter of self-defense against an American threat of nuclear war.
This guy doesn’t play games, and we can’t play games with him.
The Canadian citizen, Hyeon Soo Lim, who was born in South Korea, was the head pastor at one of Canada’s largest churches. “I think the main way to do that is with a peace treaty”, he told CNN.
While he faced charges that included allegedly harming the dignity of the supreme leadership, and trying to use religion to destroy the North Korean system.
Tensions on the Korean peninsula are at their highest for some time, with South Korea resuming propaganda broadcasts across the demilitarized zone.
Advertisement
“[I would] gather important materials”, Kim said, adding that he would then smuggle intelligence into China or South Korea.
