North Korea's Supreme Court has sent another U.S. citizen to prison, sentencing a Korean-American man to 10 years in prison and hard labor over espionage charges. Kim Dong-chul, 62, is reportedly a former resident of Fairfax, Va.
News of the sentence comes months after Kim was accused of stealing state secrets. Back in January, North Korean officials brought him forth to a CNN news crew in Pyongyang, for an interview in which Kim said he used to live in Virginia — and that he wanted the U.S. and South Korea to help him regain his freedom.
NPR's Elise Hu reports:
"State news agency KCNA showed Kim confessing to all his crimes in a scripted news conference in March. It's an attempt to appear like a deliberate judicial process, though North Korea has no rule of law."Kim is the latest American detainee in North Korea to receive a harsh sentence. Just last month, American student Otto Warmbier was convicted of subversion. He is serving a 15 year sentence of prison and hard labor. The North has in the past used American detainees as leverage in dealing with Washington."
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