North Korea Sentences Former Virginia Man To 10 Years Of Hard Labor
Source: Washington Post
By Anna Fifield April 29 at 1:43 AM
TOKYO — North Korea has sentenced a former Virginia man to 10 years in prison with hard labor for subversion, China's Xinhua news agency reported 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 sentenced for “subversion of the DPRK social system and espionage activities," Xinhua news agency reported, using the official abbreviation for North Korea.
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.
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.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/north-korea-sentences-former-virginia-man-to-10-years-of-hard-labor/2016/04/29/6b698208-0dc9-11e6-90b7-92f16a8501d9_story.html
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