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| From left: Kim Hak-song, Kim Dong-chul, Kim Sang-duk (Tony Kim) |
VietPress USA (May 9, 2018): Early this morning at 5:30AM on Wednesday, May 9, 2018, President Trump twitted to announce that " I am pleased to inform you that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is in the air and on his way back from North Korea with the 3 wonderful gentlemen that everyone is looking so forward to meeting. They seem to be in good health. Also, good meeting with Kim Jong Un. Date & Place set."
After that, Trump published another tweet: "Secretary Pompeo and his “guests” will be landing at Andrews Air Force Base at 2:00 A.M. in the morning. I will be there to greet them. Very exciting!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)
Last week on May 3rd, 2018, when North Korea moved three American prisoners from jail to a Hotel in Pyongyang, Trump hinted the release and blamed the past Administration:
"As everybody is aware, the past Administration has long been asking for three hostages to be released from a North Korean Labor camp, but to no avail. Stay tuned!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)
Hak-song, who had been doing research at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, was detained in May 2017 and accused of “hostile acts.” Dong-chul, accused of spying, was arrested in 2015 but sentenced to 10 years of hard labor in April 2016. Tony Kim, who had been living in North Korea with his wife, taught for a time at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology. He, too, was accused of “hostile criminal acts” against the regime and was detained in April 2017.
Kim Hak-song and Kim Sang-duk – or Tony Kim – were both working at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, founded by evangelical Christians from overseas, when they were detained last year on suspicion of ‘hostile acts’.
On May 7, 2018, Kim Jong-un made his second surprise visit to China, in another sign of warming ties between the two communist states just weeks ahead of Kim’s planned meeting with the US President Donald Trump. The first time Kim used his North Korean Leader Airplane that International Media called as "Air Force Un".
Trump and Kim plan to meet either this month or next in a location that has yet to be determined. Despite the fanfare surrounding the significance of such a meeting, experts have expressed caution that Kim will commit to meaningful steps toward denuclearization.
Read this breaking news from New York Times at:
https://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/world/3-americans-are-released-from-north-korea-trump-says/ar-AAx0jNb
VietPress USA News
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| © Kim Kwang Hyon/Associated Press Kim Dong-chul, an American citizen who was detained in North Korea, was escorted to his trial in Pyongyang, North Korea, in 2016. |
By CHOE SANG-HUN, The New York Times
In a diplomatic victory for President Trump, North Korea freed three American prisoners on Wednesday, removing a bitterly emotional obstacle ahead of a planned meeting between him and the young leader of the nuclear-armed nation.
The release of the three prisoners, all citizens of Korean descent, was in some ways the most tangible gesture of sincerity shown by North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, to improve relations with the United States after nearly seven decades of mutual antagonism.
Mr. Trump said the three were freed following an unannounced visit to North Korea by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was in Pyongyang, the North’s capital, for more discussions with North Korean officials about the expected meeting between Mr. Kim and Mr. Trump.
The prisoner release extended the turnabout from last year when the two leaders threatened each other with nuclear war. Mr. Kim recently announced that North Korea would stop all nuclear and long-range missile tests and shut down its nuclear test site as gestures of good will.
But unlike those announcements, the release of the three Americans is permanent, and Mr. Kim forfeited a bargaining chip in freeing them. No other Americans are believed to be held prisoner in North Korea.
The United States has persistently demanded the release of the three citizens — Kim Dong-chul, Tony Kim and Kim Hak-song — who were held on charges of committing espionage or unidentified “hostile acts” against North Korea.
![a man smiling for the camera: Tony Kim in California in 2016.]({"default":{"load":"default","w":"27","h":"40","src":"//img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/AAx0qFy.img?h=400&w=267&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f&x=157&y=249"}})
© via Reuters Tony Kim in California in 2016.Their release was said to be tied to
American detainees in North Korea have been an especially delicate issue between the two countries. One of them, Otto F. Warmbier, an undergraduate at the University of Virginia, was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in 2016 for trying to take a propaganda poster while on a trip to North Korea. He died last June shortly after being released in a coma, having spent 17 months in captivity.
His parents, Fred and Cindy Warmbier, recently filed a lawsuit in the United States accusing North Korea of kidnapping and fatally torturing their son, and last week they appeared at the United Nations to speak out about human rights abuses in North Korea.
“They used him as a political pawn for as long as they could,” Mr. Warmbier said of his son, “and when he was of no value to them, they essentially sent him home to our family in a body bag.”
The three Americans who were released had all been taken over the past two years.
Kim Dong-chul, a businessman, had been sentenced to 10 years of hard labor in April 2016 after being convicted of spying and other offenses .
A month before his trial, Mr. Kim appeared at a government-arranged news conference in Pyongyang and apologized for what he described as his attempted theft of military secrets in collusion with South Koreans. The South Korean spy agency has denied any involvement.
He said he had been arrested in October 2015 while meeting with a former North Korean soldier to receive classified data.
Tony Kim, also known as Kim Sang-duk, was arrested in April 2017. He had spent a month teaching accounting at Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, a Christian-funded college, and was trying to board a plane to leave the country when he was arrested, according to university officials.
Kim Hak-song was arrested on May 6, 2017. He volunteered at Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, doing agricultural development work at its research farm.
According to CNN, Mr. Kim, an ethnic Korean, was born in Jilin, China, near the North Korean border, and emigrated to the United States in the 1990s. After becoming an American citizen, the network said, Mr. Kim returned to China and studied agriculture in Yanbian before moving to Pyongyang.
While North Korea’s gesture on the three prisoners was welcomed in the United States, North Korea experts also cautioned that it should not necessarily be seen as a significant concession.
“It’s also worth remembering that North Korea’s practice of seizing, imprisoning and, in one case, probably torturing Americans represents reprehensible behavior that says something about the nature of the regime,” said Evans J.R. Revere, a former State Department diplomat who specializes in East Asia. “I would not give Pyongyang too much credit for undoing something it shouldn’t have been doing in the first place.”
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