North Korean government detains American professor amid rising tensions
The North Korean government has arrested and detained an American professor at the Pyongyang International airport as the professor, surnamed Kim, was about leaving the Asian country.
“He was prevented from getting on the flight out of Pyongyang,” Martina Aberg, deputy chief of mission at the Embassy of Sweden in Pyongyang told CNN. “We don’t comment further than this.”
This is not the first time the North Korean government is detaining American citizens, in the last 5 years at least two other US citizens and a British journalist have been detained by Kim Jong-Un’s led secretive government.
Otto Warmbier, 21, a student at the University of Virginia, was detained at Pyongyang airport on January 2 last year after visiting the country with a tour group. He has since been sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for allegedly removing a political sign from a hotel wall.
Kim Dong Chul, a naturalized US citizen of Korean origin, was arrested on October 2015. Last year, North Korea sentenced him to 10 years of hard labor on espionage charges.
