by STEVE HAN
North Korea has sentenced a South Korean man to life of hard labor for committing “hostile acts” against its people, according to the state-run Korean Central News Agency.
Kim Jeong-uk reportedly “repented his crimes” after attempting to set up an underground church inside the country. North Korea’s Supreme Court charged Kim with state subversion, anti-state propaganda, agitation and illegal entry into the border.
South Korean officials remain skeptical with North Korea’s ruling on Kim’s alleged crimes as the country has a track record of pushing detainees to make false confessions.
“North Korea did not respond at all to our request for the family and the legal counsel to access Kim,” the South Korean Unification Ministry spokesperson Kim Eui-do said.
Kim was reportedly arrested last October in North Korea. In February, he appeared before foreign journalists in Pyongyang and apologized for his “anti-state” activities.
Speaking to foreign media, Kim said he worked for years as a Christian missionary on the Chinese side of the border of North Korea while running a church for North Korean converts. Independent religious activities are illegal in North Korea because its totalitarian government considers religion a political threat.
A Korean American missionary Kenneth Bae, 46, is also held captive in North Korea after getting arrested in November of 2012. North Korea sentenced him to hard labor last May for attempting to overthrow the North Korean government by bringing religious activities into the country.
North Korea also detained a 75-year-old Australian missionary named John Short in February for “secretly spreading his Bible tracts around a Buddhist temple in Pyongyang.” Unlike Bae and Kim, Short was released after issuing a public apology.
Image courtesy of CNN: A North Korean soldier looking through binoculars inside a sentry post near Yalu River, which separates the North Korean town of Sinuiju from the Chinese border town of Dandong.
