North Korea said Friday that it had arrested an American university student for alleged anti-state acts.
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The North’s state-run KCNA news agency said the student, Otto Frederick Warmbier, entered North Korea as a tourist. North Korea has sometimes listed English-language surnames first, in the Korean style.
The student is the third Western citizen known to be held in North Korea. Wyoming City Schools spokeswoman Susanna Max said Warmbier was the salutatorian of his graduating class in the highly rated public high school. 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.
Meanwhile, three detained South Koreans – missionary Kim Jung-wook, Kim Kuk-gi and Choe Chun-gil – in North Korea face criminal punishment as they were sentenced to hard labor for life on charges of spying for Seoul’s intelligence agency.
“We are in touch with Otto’s family, the US State Department and the Embassy of Sweden in Pyongyang and doing all we can to secure his release”, Mr Johnson said. The United States has no diplomatic or consular relations with the North, and the Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang provides limited consular services to U.S. citizens detained there.
On a recent visit to Pyongyang, North Korean officials allowed CNN to interview another American prisoner.
It marked the fourth nuclear test in North Korea and the second since the country’s top leader Kim Jong Un took power in 2011. About 28,500 American troops are stationed in South Korea.
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Lim Hyeon-soo, a Korean-Canadian pastor, has also been held in captivity in the North since he entered the country via China on a humanitarian mission in January 2015.
