US to send envoy to North Korea over jailed citizen

The United States will send a special envoy to North Korea to seek the release of an American citizen sentenced to 15 years of compulsory hard labor, a State Department says.

Robert King, the US special envoy for North Korean human rights issues, would travel to the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, on Friday at the invitation of the government on a “humanitarian mission focused on securing the release of US citizen Kenneth Bae,” the State Department said in the statement released on Tuesday.

Bae, a tour operator who is known in North Korea as Pae Jun-ho, was arrested in November 2012 after he entered North Korea’s northeastern port city of Rason.

The 45-year-old was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in April, after North Korea’s Supreme Court convicted him of scheming the state’s collapse.

The court said the American-North Korean has used his tourism business to form groups to topple the North Korean government.

His arrest and trial came at a time of high tensions on the Korean Peninsula, when the US and South Korea had carried out large-scale military drill that angered the North.

Bae’s family said that he was recently transferred to a hospital due to his health condition as he has diabetes, an enlarged heart, and liver problems.

The US State Department also said that King “will request the DPRK pardon Mr. Bae and grant him special amnesty on humanitarian grounds so that he can be reunited with his family and seek medical treatment.”

North Korea has detained several US citizens in recent years.

Two US journalists were sentenced to hard labor in 2009 for trespassing and hostile acts after being arrested near North Korea’s border with China and held for four months. The two were freed later.