Who are the three Americans detained in North Korea

Three American citizens are being held in North-Korean prisons: Tony Kim, Otto Warmbier and Kim Dong-chul.

Life in these prisons is not easy, as former prisoners remember. Inmates are forced, for example, to live in darkness, in 5-by-6-foot cells.

Who are the three Americans detained in North Korea

Tony Kim

Tony Kim, also known as Kim Sang-Duk, was detained on Saturday at Pyongyang Airport while trying to board a plane to leave the country.

He had spent a month teaching accounting at Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (P.U.S.T.).

”The cause of his arrest is not known but some officials at P.U.S.T. told me his arrest was not related to his work at P.U.S.T.. He had been involved with some other activities outside P.U.S.T., such as helping an orphanage,” the chancellor of the university, Chan-Mo Park, said.

Tony Kim, 58, had previously taught at Yanbian University of Science and Technology, an affiliated institute in the Chinese province of Jilin, near the North Korean border.

Kim has also been involved in humanitarian work in North Korea, according to Voice of America, visiting orphanage facilities and providing food to children there. He was  a regional director in charge of transporting foreign aid materials to several areas in North Korea, including one that suffered flood damage.

Experts say that North Korean authorities could’ve detained Kim as a negotiating tool as relations with the United States continue to deteriorate. His arrest came on the same weekend that a North Korean official threatened in state-run media that they would consider sinking an American aircraft carrier.

Since the U.S. does not have diplomatic relations with North Korea, the Swedish embassy is now handling consular matters involving U.S. citizens.

”We have been informed and can confirm that there has been a detention of a U.S. citizen Saturday morning local,” Martina Aberg, deputy head of mission for the Swedish Embassy in North Korea, said.”He was prevented from getting on the flight out of Pyongyang. We don’t comment further than this.”

The man had been living in North Korea with his wife, who is believed to still be in the country.

Otto Warmbier

Otto F. Warmbier, 21, an University of Virginia undergraduate from the Cincinnati area, was detained in January 2016 after going to North Korea on a group tour.

He was arrested as he was about to board a flight home and accused of stealing a propaganda poster.

His trial, two months later, took one hour and he was sentenced to 15 years of hard labour for ”an act of hostility against the state”.

According to state media, Warmbier had came to North Korea with the intention of ”bringing down the foundation of its single-minded unity.”

In a news conference last year, Warmbier admitted he stole the poster because an acquaintance had offered to give him a used car worth $10,000 in exchange for it.

”I never, never should have allowed myself to be lured by the United States administration to commit a crime in this country, I wish that the United States administration never manipulate people like myself in the future to commit crimes against foreign countries. I entirely beg you, the people and government of the DPRK, for your forgiveness. Please! I made the worst mistake of my life!” Warmbier said in the statement.

While Human Rights Watch called the sentencing ”outrageous and shocking”, the US State Department stated that the sentence was given for political purposes, in response to strengthened economic sanctions by the US against North Korea.

Kim Dong-chul

Kim Dong-chul, an American businessman, was arrested last year for espionage. He was sentenced to 10 years of hard labour for spying and other offences.

Before his trial, a government-arranged news conference was also organised. Kim Dong-chul admitted and apologised for trying to steal military secrets. He also admitted he was working in collusion with South Koreans. The South Korean spy agency has denied any involvement.

Kim Dong-chul, 62, is an American citizen and businessman who lived in Fairfax, Virginia. He once ran a trading and hotel services company in Rason, a special economic zone that North Korea operates near its borders with China and Russia.

The man said he was arrested in October 2015 while meeting with a former North Korean soldier to receive classified data.

A North Korean defector who claimed to have met Kim in 2007 said the American citizen was doing aid work in North Korea at the time.

Conditions in North-Korean prisons

Americans who have been detained in North Korea and were released, spoke about the problems they encountered in this country’s prisons.

If the case of foreign prisoners, a forced confession, a show trial, and a sentence to years of hard labour are to be expected.

Laura Ling, an American journalist detained in 2009, has spoken about the conditions she experienced in North Korean prisons.”It was a 5-by-6-foot cell, and there were a couple of slats on the doors. There were no bars, so you couldn’t see out, and if they closed those slats, it just went completely dark. There was no way to communicate with the outside world,” she recounted.

”There were no showers. The power outages happened multiple times a day and water outages. I developed a system to wash where they would allow me to heat a kettle of water, and I would mix it with some cold water. Then I would scrub down and just splash it on me,” she added.

Kenneth Bae, an American missionary, also fell captive to the communist regime. In his memoir ”Not Forgotten,” Bae remembered being interrogated 15 hours a day ”from 8 in the morning until 10 or 11 o’clock at night, every day for four weeks — it was very intense.” During the time spent in various prisons, he lost more than 50 pounds.