US calls for NKorea amnesty for sentenced American

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. called Thursday for North Korea to grant amnesty and immediately release a Korean-American sentenced to 15 years' hard labor for "hostile acts" against the state.

Kenneth Bae, 44, a Washington state man described by friends as a devout Christian and a tour operator, is at least the sixth American detained in North Korea since 2009. The others eventually were deported or released without serving out their terms, some after trips to Pyongyang by prominent Americans, including former presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter.

Analysts say Bae's sentencing could be an effort by Pyongyang to win diplomatic concessions in the ongoing standoff over its nuclear program. But there was no immediate sign a high-profile envoy was about to make a clemency mission to the isolated nation which has taken an increasingly confrontational stance under its young leader Kim Jong Un.

State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said the U.S. was still seeking to learn the facts of Bae's case. He said the Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang, which handles consular matters there for the U.S., did not attend Tuesday's Supreme Court trial and that there hasn't been transparency in the legal proceedings.

"There's no greater priority for us than the welfare and safety of U.S. citizens abroad, and we urge the DPRK authorities to grant Mr. Bae amnesty and immediate release," Ventrell told a news conference, referencing the socialist country's formal title, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

North Korea has faced increasing international criticism over its weapons development. Six-nation disarmament talks involving the Koreas, the United States, Japan, China and Russia fell apart in 2009. Several rounds of U.N. sanctions have not encouraged the North to give up its small cache of nuclear devices, which Pyongyang says it must not only keep but expand to protect itself from a hostile Washington. Tensions have escalated since it conducted its third nuclear test since 2006 in February.

Pyongyang's tone has softened somewhat recently, following weeks of violent rhetoric, including threats of nuclear war and missile strikes. There have been tentative signs of interest in diplomacy, and a major source of North Korean outrage — annual U.S.-South Korean military drills — ended Tuesday.

Patrick Cronin, a senior analyst with the Washington-based Center for a New American Security, called Bae's conviction "a hasty gambit to force a direct dialogue with the United States."

"While Washington will do everything possible to spare an innocent American from years of hard labor, U.S. officials are aware that in all likelihood the North Korean regime wants a meeting to demonstrate that the United States in effect confers legitimacy on the North's nuclear-weapon-state status," Cronin said in an email.

White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters traveling aboard Air Force One en route to Mexico that if North Korea is interested in discussion, they should live up to their obligations under the six-party talks.

"Thus far, as you know, they have flouted their obligations, engaged in provocative actions and rhetoric that brings them no closer to a situation where they can improve the lot of the North Korean people or re-enter the community of nations," Carney said.

The state-run Korean Central News Agency announcement of Bae's sentencing came just days after it reported Saturday that authorities would soon indict and try him. It referred to Bae as Pae Jun Ho, the North Korean spelling for his Korean name. The State Department had appealed Monday for his release on humanitarian grounds.

Bae, from Lynnwood, Wash., was arrested in early November in Rason, a special economic zone in North Korea's far northeastern region bordering China and Russia, state media said. The exact nature of Bae's alleged crimes has not been revealed.

"Kenneth Bae had no access to a lawyer. It is not even known what he was charged with," the human rights group Amnesty International said in a statement. "Kenneth Bae should be released, unless he is charged with an internationally recognizable criminal offense and retried by a competent, independent and impartial court."

Ventrell said the Swedish embassy's most recent access to Bae was last Friday. It has only had a handful of brief opportunities to see him since he was arrested in early November, according to U.S. officials.

Friends and colleagues say Bae was based in the Chinese border city of Dalian and traveled frequently to North Korea to feed orphans. Bae's mother in the United States did not answer calls seeking comment Thursday.

There are parallels to a case in 2009. After Pyongyang's launch of a long-range rocket and its second underground nuclear test that year, two American journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor after sneaking across the border from China.

They later were pardoned on humanitarian grounds and released to Clinton, who met with then-leader Kim Jong Il. U.S.-North Korea talks came later that year.

In 2011, Carter visited North Korea to win the release of imprisoned American Aijalon Gomes, who had been sentenced to eight years of hard labor for crossing illegally into the North from China.

On Thursday, Carter's press secretary, Deanna Congileo, said by email that the former president has not had an invitation to visit North Korea and has no plans to visit.

Korean-American Eddie Jun was released in 2011 after Robert King, the U.S. envoy on North Korean human rights, traveled to Pyongyang. Jun had been detained for half a year over an unspecified crime.

Jun and Gomes are also devout Christians. While the North Korean Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, in practice only sanctioned services are tolerated by the government.

U.N. and U.S. officials accuse North Korea of treating opponents brutally. Foreign nationals have told varying stories about their detentions in North Korea.

The two journalists sentenced to hard labor in 2009 stayed in a guest house instead of a labor camp due to medical concerns.

Ali Lameda, a member of Venezuela's Communist Party and a poet invited to the North in 1966 to work as a Spanish translator, said that he was detained in a damp, filthy cell without trial the following year after facing espionage allegations that he denied. He later spent six years in prison after a one-day trial, he said.

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Kim reported from Seoul. Associated Press writers Lou Kesten and Nedra Pickler in Washington contributed to this report.

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US calls for NKorea amnesty for sentenced American

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. called Thursday for North Korea to grant amnesty and immediately release a Korean-American sentenced to 15 years' hard labor for "hostile acts" against the state.

Kenneth Bae, 44, a Washington state man described by friends as a devout Christian and a tour operator, is at least the sixth American detained in North Korea since 2009. The others eventually were deported or released without serving out their terms, some after trips to Pyongyang by prominent Americans, including former presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter.

Analysts say Bae's sentencing could be an effort by Pyongyang to win diplomatic concessions in the ongoing standoff over its nuclear program. But there was no immediate sign a high-profile envoy was about to make a clemency mission to the isolated nation which has taken an increasingly confrontational stance under its young leader Kim Jong Un.

State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said the U.S. was still seeking to learn the facts of Bae's case. He said the Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang, which handles consular matters there for the U.S., did not attend Tuesday's Supreme Court trial and that there hasn't been transparency in the legal proceedings.

"There's no greater priority for us than the welfare and safety of U.S. citizens abroad, and we urge the DPRK authorities to grant Mr. Bae amnesty and immediate release," Ventrell told a news conference, referencing the socialist country's formal title, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

North Korea has faced increasing international criticism over its weapons development. Six-nation disarmament talks involving the Koreas, the United States, Japan, China and Russia fell apart in 2009. Several rounds of U.N. sanctions have not encouraged the North to give up its small cache of nuclear devices, which Pyongyang says it must not only keep but expand to protect itself from a hostile Washington. Tensions have escalated since it conducted its third nuclear test since 2006 in February.

Pyongyang's tone has softened somewhat recently, following weeks of violent rhetoric, including threats of nuclear war and missile strikes. There have been tentative signs of interest in diplomacy, and a major source of North Korean outrage — annual U.S.-South Korean military drills — ended Tuesday.

Patrick Cronin, a senior analyst with the Washington-based Center for a New American Security, called Bae's conviction "a hasty gambit to force a direct dialogue with the United States."

"While Washington will do everything possible to spare an innocent American from years of hard labor, U.S. officials are aware that in all likelihood the North Korean regime wants a meeting to demonstrate that the United States in effect confers legitimacy on the North's nuclear-weapon-state status," Cronin said in an email.

White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters traveling aboard Air Force One en route to Mexico that if North Korea is interested in discussion, they should live up to their obligations under the six-party talks.

"Thus far, as you know, they have flouted their obligations, engaged in provocative actions and rhetoric that brings them no closer to a situation where they can improve the lot of the North Korean people or re-enter the community of nations," Carney said.

The state-run Korean Central News Agency announcement of Bae's sentencing came just days after it reported Saturday that authorities would soon indict and try him. It referred to Bae as Pae Jun Ho, the North Korean spelling for his Korean name. The State Department had appealed Monday for his release on humanitarian grounds.

Bae, from Lynnwood, Wash., was arrested in early November in Rason, a special economic zone in North Korea's far northeastern region bordering China and Russia, state media said. The exact nature of Bae's alleged crimes has not been revealed.

"Kenneth Bae had no access to a lawyer. It is not even known what he was charged with," the human rights group Amnesty International said in a statement. "Kenneth Bae should be released, unless he is charged with an internationally recognizable criminal offense and retried by a competent, independent and impartial court."

Ventrell said the Swedish embassy's most recent access to Bae was last Friday. It has only had a handful of brief opportunities to see him since he was arrested in early November, according to U.S. officials.

Friends and colleagues say Bae was based in the Chinese border city of Dalian and traveled frequently to North Korea to feed orphans. Bae's mother in the United States did not answer calls seeking comment Thursday.

There are parallels to a case in 2009. After Pyongyang's launch of a long-range rocket and its second underground nuclear test that year, two American journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor after sneaking across the border from China.

They later were pardoned on humanitarian grounds and released to Clinton, who met with then-leader Kim Jong Il. U.S.-North Korea talks came later that year.

In 2011, Carter visited North Korea to win the release of imprisoned American Aijalon Gomes, who had been sentenced to eight years of hard labor for crossing illegally into the North from China.

On Thursday, Carter's press secretary, Deanna Congileo, said by email that the former president has not had an invitation to visit North Korea and has no plans to visit.

Korean-American Eddie Jun was released in 2011 after Robert King, the U.S. envoy on North Korean human rights, traveled to Pyongyang. Jun had been detained for half a year over an unspecified crime.

Jun and Gomes are also devout Christians. While the North Korean Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, in practice only sanctioned services are tolerated by the government.

U.N. and U.S. officials accuse North Korea of treating opponents brutally. Foreign nationals have told varying stories about their detentions in North Korea.

The two journalists sentenced to hard labor in 2009 stayed in a guest house instead of a labor camp due to medical concerns.

Ali Lameda, a member of Venezuela's Communist Party and a poet invited to the North in 1966 to work as a Spanish translator, said that he was detained in a damp, filthy cell without trial the following year after facing espionage allegations that he denied. He later spent six years in prison after a one-day trial, he said.

___

Kim reported from Seoul. Associated Press writers Lou Kesten and Nedra Pickler in Washington contributed to this report.

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Kerry heads to East Asia, seeks help on NKorea

LONDON (AP) — John Kerry had been secretary of state for little more than a week when North Korea tested a nuclear bomb.

He gathered top aides together for a morning meeting and asked for ideas, prompting a conversation about how to get China to join the United States in putting pressure on Pyongyang, according to a senior administration official who was present. The debate encapsulates America's struggle to come up with a strategy — based on sticks, carrots or a combination of both — to convince China to police its own backyard.

As Kerry heads to East Asia for his first time as America's top diplomat, some progress has been made in convincing Beijing, North Korea's biggest benefactor, to start getting tough with its neighbor. The question is whether it will make a difference.

North Korea's government agency said Thursday that it has "powerful striking means" on standby for a launch, amid speculation in Seoul and Washington that North Korea will test-fire a mid-range missile designed to reach the U.S. territory of Guam in the Pacific Ocean. It was the latest warning from the North, which launched a long-range rocket in December and conducted an underground nuclear test in February.

For years, Washington has been putting its hopes in Beijing to rein in the provocative behavior and combative rhetoric from North Korea. China has more leverage over the North than any other country, having massively boosted trade ties with the isolated regime in recent years and maintaining close military relations.

But the U.S. has been frustrated by the reaction from a government that in many ways has different priorities. China, analysts and officials often say, fears the implosion of North Korea's impoverished state and the regional instability that would cause far more immediate damage than the North's nuclear proliferation and missile program. And China remains wary of any enhanced U.S. involvement in its backyard.

"If anyone has real leverage over the North Koreans, it is China," U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told Congress Thursday. "And the indications that we have are that China is itself rather frustrated with the behavior and the belligerent rhetoric of ... Kim Jong Un."

China's role in containing North Korea is expected to be front and center when Kerry arrives in Seoul on Friday. He then travels to Beijing and Tokyo.

At a meeting Wednesday in London, Kerry and Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida "discussed the special role China can play in exerting pressure on the North Korean leadership," according to a State Department official who was present.

Kerry, the official added, stressed the need to "change the dynamic in North Korea, and he emphasized the importance of continuing to put pressure on North Korea with economic sanctions." The official wasn't authorized to speak publicly on the closed-doors meeting and demanded anonymity.

Kerry and the other foreign ministers from the Group of Eight industrialized nations "condemned in the strongest possible terms" Thursday the North's nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs.

"They condemned DPRK's current aggressive rhetoric and confirmed that this will only serve to further isolate the DPRK," the final communique said, using the acronym for North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. "They urged the DPRK to engage in credible and authentic multilateral talks on denuclearization."

In recent weeks, Washington and Beijing have cooperated on new sanctions against the North and both have decried the increasing threats from Kim Jong Un's government, which have expanded to include talk of a nuclear strike against the United States. It is not believed to have such capacity, but the provocative rhetoric has officials around the world extremely worried.

At the State Department meeting after North Korea's Feb. 12 nuclear test, different ideas for how to bring about a new assertiveness from Beijing were tossed around, according to the senior U.S. official, who wasn't authorized to speak publicly about the meeting and demanded anonymity.

One approach could be described best as the power of persuasion: Make the case to Chinese authorities, offered many times previously, that both the U.S. and China share a common interest in ensuring a stable Korean Peninsula, without the threat of nuclear war in the Asia-Pacific.

The other approach is more akin to the power of example: Show the Chinese what it means if they cannot control the North's behavior by beefing up U.S. defenses and sending more American military assets right into China's backyard.

Over the past few weeks, the Obama administration has applied doses of both, while keeping up diplomatic efforts. President Barack Obama called Chinese President Xi Jinping in mid-March to discuss North Korea.

Military maneuvers in South Korea have served as a reminder of the overwhelming deterrent force the U.S. and its ally maintain. The deployments also have sent a message to Beijing.

But the North's history of unpredictability means no one knows for sure what it will all mean, even if analysts say North Korea is unlikely to initiate any attack on South Korea like the one that started the Korean War in 1950, and is unlikely to target Japan or American interests in the region.

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AP Intelligence Writer Kimberly Dozier contributed to this report from Washington.

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UN votes to probe NKorea suspected rights abuses

GENEVA (AP) — The United Nations' top human rights body unanimously approved Thursday a formal probe into North Korea for possible crimes against humanity.

The 47-nation U.N. Human Rights Council signed off on the resolution backed by the U.S., Japan and the European Union that authorizes an investigation into what U.N. officials describe as suspected widespread and systematic violations of human rights in North Korea.

Japan's ambassador, Takashi Okada, denounced the abduction of foreign nationals and other disappearances in North Korea, and said the aim of the investigation is to "guide the international community in addressing this situation from an independent and impartial stand point."

The vote follows the recommendations of U.N. special rapporteur Marzuki Darusman, who told the Geneva-based council in a report last month that the secretive Asian nation displays nine patterns of human rights violations. Darusman said the "grave, widespread and systematic violations of human rights" include having prison camps, the enforced disappearances of citizens and using food to control people.

It paves the way for the creation of a "Commission of Inquiry" for one year with three members and calls on Pyongyang to cooperate with that team of independent experts, which will include Darusman.

However, North Korea's U.N. Ambassador in Geneva, So Se Pyong, fiercely denounced the move, calling the resolution "no more than an instrument that serves the political purposes of the hostile forces in their attempt to discredit the image of the DPRK and to change the socialist system chosen and developed by our people."

He was referring to North Korea by the initials of its formal name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

The resolution itself was "political invectives with serious distortions, fabrications and accusations about the human rights situation of the DPRK," he added. "As we have stated time and again, those human rights abuses have totally nothing to do with the DPRK."

In 22 previous reports over the past nine years and 16 resolutions adopted by the U.N. General Assembly, the world body of 193 nations has again and again condemned North Korea's human rights record.

The U.N.'s top rights official, Navi Pillay, also has urged such an investigation — the Commission of Inquiry authorized by the United Nations, but performed by independent experts. She has said the U.N. has amassed evidence indicating that up to 200,000 people are being held in North Korean political prison camps rife with torture, rape and slave labor, and that some of the abuses may amount to crimes against humanity.

Julie de Rivero of Human Rights Watch in Geneva said the "long awaited inquiry will help expose decades of abuse by the North Korean government" and send a strong message to Pyongyang that the world is watching.

But North Korea maintains that U.S. hostility and the threat of American troops in South Korea lurk as factors in the push for an international investigation. The U.S. stations about 28,500 troops in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.

Darusman has told the U.N. that little has changed under the country's new leader, Kim Jong Un, who succeeded his father more than a year ago, and who has made it his top priority to strengthen the military while about 16 million of North Korea's 25 million people suffer from hunger and malnutrition.

"For too long the population of the country has been subjected to widespread and systematic human rights violations and abuses," said Ireland's ambassador, Gerard Corr, speaking on behalf of the European Union. "For too long, the government of the DPRK has persistently refused to cooperate with the Human Rights Council and the special rapporteur."

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