North Korea has charged a 30-year-old American man with illegally crossing its border with China, the fourth US citizen to be caught entering North Korea in less than a year.
The state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported in a brief dispatch that Aijalon Mahli Gomes, from Boston, had been charged “because his crime has been confirmed”. He appears to be the unnamed American man who was reported to have been arrested for entering illegally on January 25.
The US State Department confirmed last week that a diplomat from the Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang, which represents US interests in North Korea in the absence of diplomatic relations, had visited an American prisoner. The question now is whether North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Il, will hastily expel Mr Gomes or whether he will try to use him as a political pawn in his fraught dealings with the US.
Last August Mr Kim won a visit from the former President, Bill Clinton, who successfully pleaded for the release of two female American journalists who had been arrested while filming a television documentary close to the Chinese border.
On Christmas Day a missionary named Robert Park crossed into North Korea singing hymns and speaking of his wish to free the occupants of North Korea’s gulags.
The two women were tried and sentenced to 12 years’ hard labour before being released at Mr Clinton’s entreaty after five months in detention and an emotional campaign by friends and family.
Mr Park was released after 43 days after repenting of his crime and expressing admiration for North Korean human rights, according to KCNA.
South Korea is also investigating a claim by the North that it has detained four South Koreans for illegal entry. A number of clandestine South Korean aid and missionary groups regularly make the risky journey across from China into North Korea.
