20100206 N Korea says it will free ‘repentant’ missionary

N Korea says it will free ‘repentant’ missionary

SECRET MESSAGE? : Robert Park praised the country, but a Seoul-based activist said the fact he was wearing a black tie was a hint he may have been speaking against his will

AP, SEOUL
Saturday, Feb 06, 2010, Page 5
　

US detainee Robert Park speaks during an interview in Pyongyang, North Korea, in this picture released yesterday.
PHOTO: AFP

A “repentant” US missionary set to be freed from North Korea after being arrested at the border on Christmas said he was ashamed of the “biased” view he once held of the communist nation, Pyongyang’s state media said on Friday.

Breaking its silence about Robert Park’s fate, North Korea announced on Friday that the American would be released from custody after admitting to entering the country illegally and showing “sincere repentance” for the transgression.

Park, 28, slipped across the frozen Tumen River from China into North Korea carrying letters calling on leader Kim Jong-il to close the country’s notoriously brutal prison camps and to step down from power — acts that could risk a death sentence in the totalitarian nation.

However, the government “decided to leniently forgive and release him, taking his admission and sincere repentance of his wrong doings into consideration,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency said. Details of his release were not immediately available.

Park, 28, of Tucson, Arizona, appeared healthy if a bit gaunt in photos released by KCNA during what it called an interview with the American. Dressed in a dark suit and tie, he smiled and gesticulated in the photos, a microphone and bottles of water on the table before him.

Back home, his family exulted at the prospect of Park’s release.

“We are very excited but I don’t know if it’s real or not. We have to wait and see if it’s really happening,” his father, Pyong Park, told reporters by telephone from his home in Carlsbad, California.

In Tucson, the pastor who ordained Park as a missionary in 2007 said his congregation was “ecstatic” at news Park was safe. The Reverend John Benson and others said a rally set for Feb. 25 at the University of Tucson to call for Park’s release could end up a homecoming party instead.

US officials said they were informed about his pending release.

“North Korean authorities informed us recently of their intention to do so and we are pleased they are proceeding,” National Security Council spokesman Ben Chang said in Washington.

Park was detained nearly four months after two other Americans, journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling, were released with former President Bill Clinton’s help after they were arrested at the border and sentenced to prison.

Late last month, KCNA reported the arrest of another American suspected of illegal entry. He has not been identified.

“Because negotiations are slowly beginning to gain momentum, North Korea wouldn’t have wanted to break the mood,” said Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea expert at Dongguk University in Seoul.

“Instead, they would have wanted to use this opportunity to improve their national image.” KCNA said Park proposed being interviewed by the state-run news agency, and released what it said was a transcript of the interview.

The interview has not been aired on state TV in North Korea, and could not be independently verified.

KCNA said Park told the news agency he felt compelled to go to North Korea to draw attention to reported rights abuses and mass killings, even if it meant risking his life.

North Korea is regarded as having one of the world’s worst human rights records, with some 154,000 political prisoners held in six camps across the country, according to the South Korean government.

Park reportedly said he expected to be shot by soldiers or thrown behind bars. But he said he had been fed “false propaganda made by the West to tarnish” North Korea’s image.

“I have never seen such kind and generous people,” KCNA, reported him as saying. He also described his care as attentive and loving.

KCNA also quoted Park as saying he felt embarrassment and shame over what he considered a “biased view” of North Korea.

But Jo Sung-rae, of the Seoul-based activist group Pax Koreana, was skeptical of the KCNA report. He said Park told him he’d never wear the color black again, calling it a color “God does not like.”

“But Park appeared in the KCNA interview with a black tie. We believe this is his message to the world that he is being forced to act against his will,” he said at a Seoul rally.