Focus on Americans detained in North Korea

Kim Tong-hyung, Associated Press

Update

8:42 pm EST, Friday, November 16, 2018

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – North Korea has announced that it was expelling the American Bruce Byron Lowrance after illegally entering the police state known for its anti-corruption action. US. fervor.

He is suspected of being the same person who was deported by South Korea a year ago after being caught straying near the mines-crossed border with North Korea, seeking a way to cross.

Sneaking into North Korea has proven to be a powerful temptation for some Americans. Some were motivated by religious zeal, others were simply drawn to the mystery of a distant and cloistered country that seemed to be the opposite of all that they had experienced.

Here is an overview of Americans who have entered North Korea in recent decades:

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BRUCE BYRON LOWRANCE

The North Korean central news agency, Northern official, said Lowrance was arrested last month after illegally entering the border with China. While it is said that he came under the "manipulation" of the CIA, many foreign detainees said after their release from North Korea that their convictions had been forced.

North Korea's decision to deport Lowrance after only one month of imprisonment would be remarkably fast by Pyongyang standards, apparently reflecting a desire to keep alive a positive atmosphere of dialogue with the United States.

Washington and Pyongyang have been engaged in talks on the North's nuclear program since the summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump in June when they issued vague, ambitious targets for a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula.

In November of last year, South Korea announced that a man with the same name as Lowrance had been arrested without authorization in an area south of the demilitarized zone. The man later told South Korean investigators that he believed his trip to North Korea would resolve tensions between Washington and Pyongyang following the death of Otto Warmbier, an American student who died a few days later. have been released from the North in a coma.

Lowrance was arrested in South Korea the same day, a North Korean soldier escaped dramatically in the south of the country, crossing the border under fire from bullets fired by his former comrades.

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OTTO WARMBIER

Warmbier, 22, a student at the University of Virginia, died last June, shortly after being repatriated home after 17 months in captivity.

Warmbier was arrested during a visit to a tour group during his visit to North Korea in January 2016 and convicted of attempting to steal a propaganda poster and sentenced to 15 years of forced labor. North Korea has denied accusations of relatives that it tortured Warmbier and said he received "medical care and care in all sincerity". The North has accused the United States of defamation and has been described as the "biggest victim" of his death.

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MATTHEW MILLER

In September 2014, North Korea sentenced Miller, 24, of Bakersfield, Calif., To six years of forced labor. He entered the country illegally to practice espionage.

The North Korean Supreme Court stated that Mr. Miller had torn his tourist visa at Pyongyang Airport upon his arrival in April of this year and had confessed to "the wild ambition" to do the same. 39, prison experience to be able to secretly investigate the human rights situation in North Korea.

Miller is released in November of the same year with another American, Kenneth Bae, missionary and guide.

A few weeks before his release, Miller briefly spoke with the Associated Press at a hotel in Pyongyang, where the North Korean government allowed him to call his family. He said that he was digging in the fields eight hours a day and that he was isolated.

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KENNETH BAE

Bae, of Lynnwood, Washington State, was arrested in November 2012 while leading a tour group in North Korea. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison for "hostile acts" after being accused of trafficking in incendiary documents and attempting to create a base for anti-government activities at a border hotel.

During his detention, he told a pro-North Korean newspaper based in Japan that he felt abandoned. His family said he was suffering from chronic health problems, including back pain, diabetes, an enlarged heart and liver problems.

Bae returned home in November 2014 after a secret mission by the then US chief of intelligence, James Clapper, secured his release, as well as Miller's. A month earlier, North Korea had released another US citizen, Jeffrey Fowle, after detaining him for six months for leaving a Bible in a nightclub in Chongjin City.

North Korea officially guarantees freedom of religion, but analysts and defectors describe the country as an anti-religious country. The distribution of Bibles and secret prayer services can mean imprisonment or execution, say the defectors.

In 2009, the American missionary Robert Park went to North Korea with a Bible in hand to draw attention to human rights violations in North Korea and demand the resignation of the leader of the time, Kim Jong Il. Park, who was deported from the country in February 2010, said he was tortured by interrogators.

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CHARLES JENKINS

Charles Jenkins, of North Carolina, is one of the few American soldiers who fled to North Korea during the Cold War and later appeared in North Korean propaganda films.

Jenkins deserted his military post in South Korea in 1965 and fled across the demilitarized zone. In 1980, he married Hitomi Soga, a 21-year-old Japanese nurse student, abducted by North Korean agents in 1978, at the age of 21.

Soga was allowed to return to Japan in 2002. It was two years before Jenkins was allowed to leave North Korea for Japan, where he surrendered to the US military authorities to deal with accusations of having abandoned his unit and left North Korea. He died in Japan in 2017.

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EVAN HUNZIKER

Evan Hunziker reportedly drank with a friend in 1996 when he decided to swim naked on the Yalu River between China and North Korea. Hunziker, released three months later, had problems with drugs, alcohol and justice. He was later found dead in the state of Washington in a state of suicide.