hankyoreh

By Kim Kyu-won, staff reporter

North Korea has sentenced Korean-American Kenneth Bae to 15 years of hard labor.

Bae, 44, entered the country in November to lead a tourist trip, and has been detained there for the past six months. His case could now be used as leverage by North Korea in forcing dialogue with Washington.

North Korea‘s Korean Central News Agency announced the verdict on May 2.

“The trial for Kenneth Bae, a US citizen captured after having entered the country at Rason on November 3 of last year on the pretext of tourism, was carried out on April 30 by the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea Supreme Court,” the report said. “The court sentenced him to 15 years of hard labor for hostile acts against the state.”

The sentence was harsher than similar cases in the past. Two reporters, Korean-American Euna Lee and Chinese-American Lisa Ling, were given sentences of 12 years of hard labor after being arrested in 2009 for entering the country illegally. Aijalon Mahli Gomes, a US citizen arrested on the same charge in 2010, was given eight years of hard labor.

Bae’s sentence could be particularly harsh as arrested for photographing so-called “kkotjebi,” or homeless North Korean children. The term “kkotjebi” literally means “wandering swallow” and refers to the children’s constant searching for food. North Korea prohibits unauthorized photography by foreign visitors and doesn’t recognize the existence of extreme child poverty.

Experts read the surprise sentence after six months of detention as a sign that North Korea wants to use Bae’s situation to force dialogue with Washington. In the case of Lee and Ling, both were freed after former US President Bill Clinton visited North Korea to meet with then-leader Kim Jong-il.

But North Korea failed to gain much from the visit, since Clinton traveled to North Korea in a private capacity and refused to discuss anything else, following the government’s insistence on not responding to hostage taking.

Former President Jimmy Carter had previously gotten the ball rolling with dialogue when he met then-leader Kim Il-sung in North Korea after the first nuclear crisis in 1994.

Immediately after Bae’s sentence was announced, there were rumours that Carter would visit North Korea to seek his release, which Carter quickly denied. “President Carter has not had an invitation to visit North Korea and has no plans to visit,” Carter’s press secretary, Deanna Congileo, announced.

Bae, who runs a North Korea travel agency based in China and resides in the US state of Washington, was arrested on Nov. 3 of last year after bringing a group of foreign travelers into North Korea through the port of Rason in North Hamgyeong province.

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