North Korea to issue verdict on US detainee

North Korea said it will hand down a verdict on a detained American citizen accused of crimes against the state, the communist country's official Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday.

Pae Jun Ho, who entered North Korea's Rason city on November 3rd as a tourist, will face judgment in the supreme court after admitting to the charges, KCNA said, without citing a source. Mr Pae was involved with a Protestant Christian religious movement, according to a CNN report in December that identified him as Kenneth Bae.

The US state department is aware of reports that a US citizen will face trial in North Korea, department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in an e-mail. The department will work closely with representatives of the embassy of Sweden in Pyongyang, which visited the US citizen last week.

A delegation that included former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson failed during its visit to North Korea in January to secure Mr Pae’s release. “In the process of investigation, he admitted that he committed crimes aimed to topple the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] with hostility toward it,” the report said.

The Korean peninsula has been on edge since February, when Kim Jong Un's regime detonated an atomic bomb in defiance of United Nations sanctions and then threatened pre-emptive nuclear strikes against its enemies. – (Bloomberg)