Kim Dong Chul, 62, was sentenced to 10 years in prison with hard labour after a brief trial in Pyongyang on Friday which found him guilty of espionage and subversion under Articles 60 and 64 of the North’s criminal code.
Further details were not immediately available.
Kim’s sentencing comes on the heels of a 15-year sentence handed down on Otto Warmbier, an American university student who the North says was engaged in anti-state activities while visiting the country as a tourist earlier this year.
North Korea regularly accuses Washington and Seoul of sending spies to overthrow its government to enable the US-backed South Korean government to control the entire peninsula. Some foreigners previously arrested have read statements of guilt which they later said were coerced.
Most of those who are sentenced to long prison terms are released before serving their full time.
In the past, North Korea has held out until senior US officials or statesmen came to personally bail out detainees, all the way up to former president Bill Clinton, whose visit in 2009 secured the freedom of American journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling. Both had crossed North Korea’s border from China illegally.
Theguardian
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