Asia
North Korea Says Kim Personally Ordered Release of Detained American Jeffrey Fowle
By CHOE SANG-HUN
North Korea said its leader ordered the release of Mr. Fowle, one of
three Americans recently detained in the country, after considering
requests from President Obama.
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea said Wednesday that its leader, Kim Jong-un,
had personally ordered the release of Jeffrey E. Fowle, one of three
Americans recently detained in the isolated country, after considering
requests from President Obama.
Mr.
Fowle, an Ohio municipal worker, had been held for nearly six months
until Tuesday, when an American military plane picked him up. He arrived
Wednesday in Ohio, where he was reunited with his wife and three
children.
His release was a move few had expected.
In
early September, Mr. Fowle and two other Americans imprisoned for what
North Korea called anti-state crimes appeared in the North Korean
capital, Pyongyang, for government-arranged interviews with American
news media in which they beseeched Washington to send a high-profile
envoy to negotiate their freedom.
But United States officials said Pyongyang had repeatedly rejected their offer to send a high-level representative.
Mr.
Kim “took into consideration the repeated request from President Obama
of the United States and took a special step to free the American
criminal Jeffrey Edward Fowle,” the North’s state-run Korean Central
News Agency said on Wednesday in a dispatch monitored by the South
Korean news agency Yonhap.
Mr.
Kim recently reappeared in state-run media after a six-week absence,
ending widespread speculation about his health and his grip on power.
With the statement on Wednesday, North Korea appeared to be burnishing
Mr. Kim’s image at home as a leader capable of doing a favor for the
American president. At the same time, outside analysts began wondering
whether the sudden release of Mr. Fowle was a conciliatory gesture from
Mr. Kim to bolster his government’s efforts to engage Washington in a
dialogue.
The
report was the North’s first public comment on the circumstances
surrounding Mr. Fowle’s release. Washington has not offered an
explanation, except for thanking the Swedish government, which maintains
an embassy in Pyongyang and has represented the interests of Americans
held in the North. Washington has no diplomatic ties with Pyongyang, and
the two sides remain technically at war after the Korean War was halted
in 1953 in a truce.
Mr.
Fowle, 56, of Miamisburg, Ohio, was released while he was awaiting
trial on charges of committing an anti-state crime. He entered North
Korea in late April on a tourist visa and was arrested in May after
leaving a Bible at a bar. North Korea considers any attempt to
disseminate Christian messages by an outsider a crime aimed at
undermining its political system.
Another
American citizen, the missionary Kenneth Bae, was arrested in late 2012
in the North. He was later sentenced to 15 years of hard labor on
charges of trying to build an underground proselytizing network in a
plot to overthrow the government in Pyongyang. Last month, the North’s
Supreme Court convicted the third American, Matthew Miller, on spying
charges and sentenced him to six years of hard labor.
North
Korea later said that Mr. Miller, 25, of Bakersfield, Calif., had
entered the country hoping to be arrested and become an eyewitness to
prison life in the country. It said that Mr. Miller had torn up his
tourist visa upon arriving in Pyongyang in April so that his unruly
behavior could land him in a prison camp, where he hoped to collect
evidence of human rights violations.
The
detention of the three Americans strained North Korea’s already rocky
relations with Washington, which has been trying to isolate the country
with the help of United Nations sanctions imposed for the North’s
development and testing of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles.
Washington
accused Pyongyang of holding the Americans as “pawns” — human
bargaining chips who could force the United States to make concessions,
such as taking part in bilateral talks, which the North has long sought.
Following
Mr. Fowle’s release, Washington urged North Korea to free the remaining
two Americans. However, from the North Korean point of view, Mr.
Fowle’s alleged crime was less offensive than the charges leveled
against Mr. Bae and Mr. Miller.
In
the past, North Korea has freed American detainees only after
high-profile Americans, including former Presidents Bill Clinton and
Jimmy Carter, have visited Pyongyang to secure their release. But it has
also released detainees without such a visit.
Last
December, the North freed an 85-year-old American tourist, Merrill E.
Newman of Palo Alto, Calif., after more than a month of captivity. The
North had accused him of war crimes after learning that Mr. Newman, a
Korean War veteran, had helped train anti-Communist guerrillas during
the war. But it cited Mr. Newman’s age, 85 at the time, as a reason for
releasing him.
It
also expelled Robert Park, a Korean-American Christian activist, in
2010. Mr. Park entered the country in December 2009 to draw
international attention to the North’s poor human rights record.
Mr.
Fowle’s release came at a time when North Korea appears to be seeking a
thaw in its relations with its neighbors after years of escalating
tensions, marked by the nuclear and missile tests.
A
high-ranking delegation from the North made a surprise visit to South
Korea early this month and agreed to resume high-level inter-Korean
dialogue, although the two Koreas later exchanged fire across their land
and sea borders. North Korea has also agreed to investigate the fates
of Japanese citizens allegedly kidnapped by its agents decades ago.
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