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Norks sentence U.S. man to 8 years of hard labor
SEOUL, April 7 (Yonhap) -- North Korea sentenced a detained U.S. man to eight years of hard labor and a hefty fine for illegal entry into the communist state and hostility toward it, its official media reported Wednesday. The move contrasts with Pyongyang's release in February of an American activist detained also for illegal entry, suggesting that the regime is trying to use the latest case as a negotiating card amid a nuclear standoff with Washington.Eight years? He'll never make it. The Norks will dangle him as bait for yet another concession ... The trial took place Tuesday, attended by unidentified officials of the Swedish embassy in Pyongyang, the Korean Central News Agency said in a four-paragraph dispatch monitored in Seoul. North Korea last month identified the American as Aijalon Mahli Gomes, who crossed into North Korea through the border with China on Jan. 25. He was a former English teacher in South Korea with reportedly deep religious convictions. "His guilt was confirmed according to the relevant articles of the criminal code of the DPRK at the trial. On this basis, the court sentenced him to eight years of hard labor and a fine of 70 million won," the KCNA said. "The accused admitted all the facts which had been put under accusation." Under the North Korean trade bank's official exchange rate, the fine amounts to about US$700,000. "North Korea is announcing the legal process concerning Gomes has ended," Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korea Studies in Seoul said. "It is likely to hold out the release of Gomes as a icebreaker when and if it negotiates with the U.S. over its possible return to nuclear talks." The announcement came days after North Korea threatened to stop preserving the remains of U.S. soldiers missing from the 1950-53 Korean War, a move likely aimed at opening direct talks with the U.S. In December, a Korean-American missionary named Robert Park entered the North to publicize human rights abuses in the country, but was released in early February. Separately, two American journalists were released in August last year, months after they accidentally entered the North while reporting on North Korean defectors along the border with China. Posted by: Steve White 2010-04-07 |
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