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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U.S. seeks North Korean amnesty for American jailed for 15 years

By Ju-min Park and Paul Eckert

SEOUL/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - North Korea sentenced an American citizen to 15 years of hard labor on Thursday for what it said were crimes against the state, prompting the United States to call for his immediate release to keep him from becoming a bargaining chip between the two countries.

Kenneth Bae, 44, was born in South Korea but is a naturalized U.S. citizen and studied psychology for two years at the University of Oregon. His sentencing comes after two months of saber-rattling that saw North Korea threaten the United States and South Korea with nuclear war.

Pyongyang has previously tried to use American prisoners as negotiation assets in talks with Washington. Washington is not looking for an envoy to try to secure Bae's release as it has sometimes done, said a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The official said the United States has sought in recent years to break out of a pattern of having to resolve repeated crises with North Korea through transactional deals.

"We urge the DPRK (North Korea) to grant Mr. Bae amnesty and immediate release," State Department deputy spokesman Patrick Ventrell said. It was not clear if Bae had been taken immediately to jail.

Bruce Klingner, a former CIA North Korea analyst, dismissed the idea that Bae's release would trigger the renewal of long-stalled diplomacy.

"Previous arrests of U.S. citizens didn't lead to changes in North Korean policy, resumption of bilateral dialogue or breakthroughs in U.S.-North Korean relations," said Klingner, a senior fellow at Washington's Heritage Foundation think tank.

Human rights activists in South Korea say Bae may have been arrested for taking pictures of starving children.

FAMILY SAYS 'BAFFLED'

Bae is "a committed Christian," said David Ross, director of a missionary training center at Antioch World Ministries Inc in Monroe, Washington.

"He has feelings for orphans and has done some ministry work feeding orphans," added Ross, who said he has been a casual acquaintance of Bae since they met four years ago through church affiliations in Hawaii. "He has a missionary heart," Ross said.

Bae's mother, Myung-Hee Bae, told Reuters in a brief telephone interview that she had last spoken to her son on April 23 and that he told her during the call that he was well. Myung-Hee Bae, who lives in the Seattle area, said it was the only call she had received from her son since he was detained.

His sister, Terri Chung, told CNN in an interview that he had been working as a tour guide bringing people from China into North Korea and that he had never before run into trouble doing so.

"We can't really know for sure why he would be arrested. He's only had the biggest heart for the people and the nation of North Korea," she said. "We are baffled just like anybody else about why a man like my brother could be arrested."

"We just pray and ask for leaders of both nations to please just see him as one man caught in between and we just ask that he be allowed to come home," Chung said.

Bae was one of five tourists who visited the northeastern North Korean city of Rajin in November and has been held since then. The State Department recommends that U.S. citizens avoid travel to North Korea, although it does not block trips.

"U.S. citizens crossing into North Korea, even accidentally, have been subject to arbitrary arrest and long-term detention," reads the department's travel warning, updated in March.

NEGOTIATING CARD?

Bill Richardson, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who has made numerous trips to North Korea that included efforts to free detained Americans, said Bae's case should not become entangled in the current U.S.-North Korea impasse.

"Now that the sentencing and the North Korean legal process has been completed, it is important that negotiations begin to secure Kenneth Bae's release on humanitarian grounds or a general amnesty," said Richardson, who visited North Korea in January with Google Inc CEO Eric Schmidt.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said any negotiations with North Korea were "dependent upon the North Koreans demonstrating a willingness to live up to their international obligations."

North Korea is the subject of U.N. Security Council resolutions calling for an end to its nuclear and missile tests, as well as punitive U.N. sanctions.

Some media reports have identified Bae as the leader of the tour group. NK News, a specialist North Korea news website, said he was the owner of a company called Nation Tours that specialized in tours of northeastern North Korea.

The reports could not be verified and North Korean state news agency KCNA did not list any specific charge other than crimes against the state, and used a Korean rendering of Bae's name, Pae Jun-ho, when it reported the Supreme Court ruling.

"North Korea has shown their intention to use him as a negotiating card as they have done in the past," said Cheong Seong-chang, senior fellow at the Sejong Institute, a think tank in Seoul.

North Korea appears to use the release of high-profile American prisoners to extract a form of personal tribute, rather than for economic or diplomatic gain, often portraying visiting dignitaries as paying homage.

'HEFTY' SENTENCE

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who has traveled to North Korea before to try to free a detained American, has no plans to do so for Bae, Carter's spokeswoman said.

According to North Korean law, the punishment for hostile acts against the state is between five and 10 years' hard labor.

"I think his sentencing was hefty. North Korea seemed to consider his acts more severe," said Jang Myung-bong, honorary professor at Kookmin University in Seoul and a North Korea law expert.

North Korea is one of the most isolated states on earth. Its official policy of "Juche," or self-reliance, is a fusion of Marxism, extreme nationalism and self-sufficiency centered on the cult of the ruling Kim family.

Bae likely will not be incarcerated in one of the North's notorious slave labor camps, such as the one where defector Kwon Hyo-jin was locked up. There, Kwon said, prisoners were worked to death and often survived only by eating rats and snakes.

"If an American served jail together with North Korean inmates, which won't happen, he could tell them about capitalism or economic developments. That would be the biggest mistake for North Korea," said Kwon, a North Korean sentenced to a camp for seven years until 2007. He defected to South Korea in 2009.

"(Bae) would be sent to a correctional facility that only houses foreigners and was set up as a model for international human rights groups."

Bae's sentencing brought bad back memories for Euna Lee, one of two U.S. journalists sentenced to 12 years in 2009 and released only after a visit to Pyongyang by former President Bill Clinton. She cried out loud in the courtroom when her labor camp sentence was handed down.

"The word 'labor camp' took the tiny hope I had away from me. I was physically and mentally weak and I really thought I would not make it home," South Korea-born Lee said via email.

Lee, then a journalist for Current TV, said her 12-year sentence included two years for illegal border crossing and 10 for the "hostile act" of making a documentary on North Koreans who risk their lives fleeing their country for nearby China.

Bae was given counsel by the Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang because the United States does not have diplomatic relations with North Korea. The embassy has declined to comment on the case and Ventrell said the Swedes did not attend Bae's trial.

(Additional reporting by Christine Kim in Seoul, Matt Spetalnick and Arshad Mohammed in Washington, Laura L. Myers in Seattle and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Editing by Alistair Bell, David Brunnstrom and Mohammad Zargham)

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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.

View the original article here