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.”
