BEIJING – Merrill Newman, an 85-year-old American from California who has been detained in North Korea since Oct. 26, was released Friday.
According to a State Department spokeswoman, officials from the US Embassy in Beijing met Mr. Newman at the airport in Beijjng and provided all appropriate consular assistance.
“We are pleased that Mr. Merrill Newman has been allowed to depart the DPRK and re-join his family. We welcome the DPRK’s decision to release him,” spokeswoman Marie Harf said Friday. “We thank the Government of Sweden for the tireless efforts of the Embassy of Sweden in Pyongyang, which acts as our Protecting Power in the DPRK.”
Newman was visiting North Korea on a nine-day tourist visa last October, traveling with a friend from his retirement community when he was arrested while sitting on an airplane at Pyongyang’s international airport, waiting to depart the country. A single uniformed officer boarded the plane and walked Newman off.
North Korea had a different view of Newman’s visit, saying that after entering the DPRK as a member of tourists’ group in October, Newman “perpetrated acts of infringing upon the dignity and sovereignty of the DPRK and slandering its socialist system, quite contrary to the purpose of tour.”
Newman is a Korean War veteran. North Korean officials coaxed an apology from him late last month for his alleged action while visiting the country.
Harf said now that Newman is released, efforts to gain the freedom of another American held there would come to the forefront.
“This positive decision by the DPRK throws into sharper relief the continuing detention of Mr. Kenneth Bae, who has been in DPRK custody for over a year. We call on the DPRK once again to pardon and grant Mr. Bae special amnesty and immediately release him as a humanitarian gesture so that he too can return home to his family. The U.S. Government will continue to work actively on his case.”
5 thoughts on “Elderly American man released by North Korea”
Their leader, that fat bastard with the sugar bowl hair cut is a coward. Punishing an old man, what a sissy.
If North Korea is so anti-freedom, why is marijuana legal there? Look it up. North Korea may be poor but America jails MUCH more of it’s citizens per capita than any other country on the planet Earth. Freedom is just another word for nothing else to lose…
@Freedom Lover-And when the law catches up with you we will jail you too doper.
KCNA, the official North Korean news agency, said the “deportation” of Mr. Newman, was done on from a “humanitarian” viewpoint.
Nothing in that country is done with Humanitarian viewpoint. One can only point to their building a ski resort and water park whilst it’s citizens suffer in labour camps and face constant food shortages.
I have no idea why people take such a risk traveling to that country, where it is evident one can be arrested and detained on a whim.
The price to get out is to apologize – just how stupid do the North Koreans think the world is? An “apology” given under coercion is no apology.
Try selling more tickets to Korean war vets now you SOB’s.