North Korea sentences former Virginia man to 10 years of hard labor

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TOKYO – North Korea has sentenced a former Virginia man to 10 years in prison with hard labor for subversion, its official news agency said Friday, in the latest case involving an American being detained by Kim Jong Un’s regime.

Kim Dong-chul, who was born in South Korea but became an American citizen in 1987, was accused of “perpetrating the state subversive plots and espionage against the DPRK,” the Korean Central News Agency reported, using the official abbreviation for North Korea.

“The accused confessed to all crimes he had committed to overthrow the social system of the DPRK while viciously slandering the dignity of its supreme leadership and its political system and gathered and offered information on its party, state and military affairs to the south Korean puppet regime, which are tantamount to state subversive plots and espionages,” the state-run agency said.

Kim’s sentence was, however, more lenient than the 15 years with hard labor handed down to Otto Warmbier, a 21-year-old University of Virginia student convicted of subversion in March after the court found he had committed a crime “pursuant to the U.S. government’s hostile policy” towards North Korea.

KCNA reported that the prosecutor demanded 15 years of hard labor but the “defense counsel” asked the court “to commute the demanded penalty, arguing that the crimes by the accused are very serious but he is old and may repent of his faults, witnessing for himself the true picture of the prospering DPRK.”

North Korea has no judicial process and no functioning rule of law, but the KCNA report was written to suggest a Western-style trial had taken place, complete with an independent defense counsel.

North Korea has in recent years developed a habit of detaining American citizens and using them as bargaining chips in negotiations with the United States, its avowed enemy. All detainees were eventually released after high-profile Americans, including former presidents Clinton and Carter, traveled to Pyongyang – visits portrayed in the state’s media as a sign of North Korea’s strength.

In addition to the two Americans, three South Koreans and a Korean-Canadian pastor are known to be being held in North Korea, which has no judicial process to speak of. The Korean-Canadian, Lim Hyeon-soo, is serving a life sentence for subversion.

Little is known about the case of Kim, 62, who was arrested on espionage charges in October.

In a highly scripted display, Kim was brought before reporters in Pyongyang in March and said that he had spied for South Korea’s intelligence agencies, sought to obtain details of the North’s military programs and tried to spread “religious” ideas – a serious crime in the North. He described his alleged acts as “unpardonable” but appealed for leniency.

Such “confessions” have become part of North Korea’s playbook for using detainees. After their release, several detainees have described being told what to say by their North Korean captors.

(c) 2016, The Washington Post ยท Anna Fifield

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