North Korea arrests and detains US professor at airport as he attempts to leave secretive country

Korean-American Tony Kim was at Pyongyang International Airport when he was arrested

North Korea has detained an American professor as he was attempting to leave the secretive country.
Korean-American Tony Kim had spent a month teaching an accounting course at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST), the university's chancellor, Chan-Mo Park said.
Kim, who also goes by his Korean name Kim Sang-duk and is in his fifties, was detained by North Korean officials at Pyongyang International Airport as he attempted to leave the country, Park said.
His arrest comes just hours after dictator Kim Jong-Un warned the country will wipe America "off the face of the Earth" after accusing the US of planning a chemical weapons attack.
 
Park said he did not know the cause of Kim's arrest.
He added: "But some officials at PUST told me his arrest was not related to his work at PUST.
"He had been involved with some other activities outside PUST such as helping an orphanage."

 

"I sincerely hope and pray that he will be released soon".
An official at South Korea's National Intelligence Service said it was not aware of the reported arrest.

 

Kim is the third US citizen to be placed into North Korean custody since 2009.

Some foreigners held by North Korea have said after their release that their confessions were coerced.
The country is also holding American, Otto Warmbier, who was sentenced to 15 years of hard labour in March 2016 for trying to steal a propaganda banner.
The student from the University of Virginia, was detained at Pyongyang airport on January 2, 2015, after visiting the country with a tour group.
Kim Dong Chul, a naturalized US citizen of Korean origin, was arrested on October 2015.



Last year, North Korea sentenced him to 10 years of hard labor on espionage charges.
Martina Aberg, deputy chief of mission at the Embassy of Sweden in Pyongyang confirmed the incident today.
The Swedish Embassy represents US interests in North Korea, since Washington and Pyongyang do not have direct diplomatic relations.
"He was prevented from getting on the flight out of Pyongyang," Aberg told CNN. "We don't comment further than this."

 
Kim is listed as an accounting professor on the website of PUST's sister institution in neighbouring China, the Yanbian University of Science and Technology (YUST). Calls to YUST were not answered.
PUST was founded by evangelical Christians and opened in 2010, with students generally the children of the country's elite.
Its volunteer faculty, many of whom are evangelical Christians, has a curriculum that includes subjects once considered taboo in North Korea, such as capitalism.
North Korea, which has been criticised for its human rights record, has in the past used detained Americans to extract high-profile visits from the United States, with which it has no formal diplomatic relations.

In an explosive new report published yesterday, the secretive country claimed the US is plotting an 'unprecedented disaster' on its nation.
However, the country says it will not remain a 'passive onlooker' - instead vowing to destroy the US, or 'empire of evils', in a catastrophic retaliation.



State newspaper The Rodong Sinmun says: "The DPRK will never remain a passive onlooker to the moves of the U.S. to provoke a biochemical war against it but will conclude the standoff with the U.S., the empire of evils, by wiping it off the face of the Earth.

"The U.S. must not disregard the warning of the DPRK that its reckless military moves would lead to its most miserable final doom."
The report, entitled 'U.S. Biochemical War Plan against Korean Nation under Fire', claimed the US is plotting a chemical weapons attack on the country.



It claimed that evidence had been uncovered suggesting the US transported chemical weapons to the South Korean port city of Busan in preparation for war.
The reclusive state is also holding Canadian pastor Hyeon Soo Lim. He was charged with subversion and given a hard labour
life sentence in 2015.


Korean-American missionary Kenneth Bae was arrested in 2012 and sentenced to 15 years hard labour for crimes against the state. He was released two years later.