North Korean government detains American professor amid rising tensions

The North Korean government has arrested and detained an American professor at the
Pyongyang International airport as the professor, surnamed Kim, was about leaving the Asian country.

The development comes hours after Japan announced that two of its Naval destroyers have began conducting joint naval drills
with America’s USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier strike group in the western Paci ic Ocean.

The U.S doesn’t have any diplomatic relations with North Korea and uses Sweden to negotiate it’s interests in North
Korea hence the Swedish embassy on Sunday confirmed the arrest and detention of Kim.

“He was prevented from getting on the flight out of Pyongyang,” Martina Aberg, deputy chief of mission at the Embassy of Sweden in Pyongyang told CNN. “We don’t
comment further than this.”

This is not the first time the North Korean government is detaining American citizens, in the last 5 years at least two other US
citizens and a British journalist have been detained by Kim Jong-Un’s led secretive government.

Otto Warmbier, 21, a student at the University of Virginia, was detained at Pyongyang airport on January 2 last year after visiting the country with a tour group.

He has since been sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for allegedly removing a political sign from a hotel wall.

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.