North sentences Korean-American to 15 years in prison

A Korean-American tour guide detained for nearly six months in North Korea has been sentenced to 15 years of “compulsory labor” for unspecified crimes against the state, Pyongyang announced yesterday.

The sentencing of Kenneth Bae, described by friends as a devout Christian, will further complicate strained relations between Pyongyang and Washington as the countries pursue tentative diplomacy following weeks of warlike threats from North Korea.

Pyongyang’s official state media said Bae’s trial took place Tuesday, but the dispatch provided few details. Bae was tried in the country’s Supreme Court on charges of plotting to overthrow the government. He could have faced the death penalty. The nature of his alleged crimes was not described.

Bae was arrested in early November in Rason, a special economic zone in North Korea’s far northeastern region bordering China and Russia, North Korea said, after bringing in a group of European tourists.

The trial mirrors 2009, when the U.S. and North Korea were locked in a standoff over Pyongyang’s decision to launch a long-range rocket and conduct an underground nuclear test. North Korea had detained two American journalists, whose eventual release after being sentenced to 12 years of hard labor paved the way for diplomacy following months of tensions.

In North Korean dispatches, Bae, a Korean-American tour guide from Washington state, is called Pae Jun Ho, the North Korean spelling of his Korean name.

AP