Says the story,
An American man
detained in North Korea for the past nine months has been hospitalized after
losing more than 50 pounds, and the need to bring him home is becoming more
urgent, his sister said Sunday.
Kenneth Bae, a
45-year-old tour operator and Christian missionary, was arrested in November
and accused of subversive activities against the authoritarian government. He
was sentenced in May to 15 years hard labor, and in letters to his family in
the Seattle area he described working in the fields weeding and planting beans
and potatoes.
. . . .
North Korea, analysts
say, has previously used detained Americans as bargaining chips in a standoff
with the United States, which has long pressed Pyongyang to abandon a nuclear
program estimated to have a handful of crude atomic weapons.
Although there have
been some tentative recent signs of diplomacy, tensions are still high on the
Korean Peninsula after an April and March that saw Pyongyang unleash a torrent
of warlike threats at Washington and Seoul in response to tightened U.N.
sanctions over a February nuclear test by the North.
North Korea wants to
use Bae's imprisonment and health problems to get a visit from a senior U.S.
envoy in the hopes of eventually restarting talks with a reluctant Washington,
said Chang Yong Seok, a North Korea expert at Seoul National University.
Bae is at least the
sixth American detained in North Korea since 2009.
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