BY News Agency
Three American citizens held for months in North Korea have been released, US President Donald Trump announced Wednesday.
Kim Dong Chul, Kim Hak-song and Kim Sang Duk were freed during US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s second visit to the North Korean capital of Pyongyang in two months.
CNN said the detainees are returning to the United States as Trump prepares to make history by becoming the first sitting US President to meet face-to-face with a North Korean leader.
Trump’s administration had previously said that if the North Koreans freed the three Americans, it would be viewed as a goodwill gesture ahead of the planned summit between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Some experts worried about the optics of a meeting being held with a leader whose country had imprisoned American citizens on what many believe were bogus charges.
Kim was boarding a flight at the airport in Pyongyang on April 22, 2017 when North Korean authorities detained him, according to the University.
He was later accused of attempting to overthrow the North Korean government.
Kim Hak-song, another US citizen who was working at PUST, was detained on May 7, 2017.
Kim is an agricultural expert who’d been teaching rice-growing at the university, his wife told CNN shortly after he was detained.
Kim, a naturalized US citizen, was born in Jilin, China, one of the provinces that borders North Korea, and is ethnically Korean. He was educated at a university in California. Two people who said they studied with Kim in the US described him as being committed to improving North Korea’s agriculture and economy.
“Professor Kim was a man who would call North Korea as his own country. He went to Pyongyang to devote himself to the development of North Korea’s agricultural technology so that the North can be self-sufficient with food,” said David Kim, his former classmate.
Kim Hak-song was also ordained as an evangelical Christian pastor affiliated with the Oriental Mission Church in Los Angeles, which could have presented problems in the atheist country. While it’s unclear if Kim’s faith had anything to do with his detention, other Americans have been severely punished for acts Pyongyang views as proselytising.
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