North Korea says arrested U.S. university student

The world must back a criminal prosecution of North Korea’s leaders as there has been no improvement in human rights there in the two years since a United Nations (UN) report detailed Nazi-style atrocities, a UN investigator said on Friday.

North Korea said today (Jan 22) it had detained a USA university student for committing a “hostile act” against the country who, if confirmed, would be the third western citizen known to be held now in the isolated state.

Otto Frederick Warmbier, who reportedly traveled to North Korea using a tourist visa, is accused of entering the country “for the goal of bringing down the foundation of its single-minded unity at the tacit connivance of the US government and under its manipulation”.

North Korea also regularly accuses Washington and Seoul of sending “spies” to overthrow its government to enable the U.S.-backed South Korean government to control the entire Korean Peninsula.

Frederick graduated from Wyoming High School in Cincinnati.

Ohio’s governor has called North Korea’s detention of a US university student from OH “inexcusable”. Some foreigners previously arrested have read statements of guilt that they later said were coerced.

“We are in touch with Otto’s family, the U.S. State Department and the Embassy of Sweden in Pyongyang and doing all we can to secure his release”, Johnson told Reuters.

“I’m asking the USA or South Korean government to rescue me”, Kim said during an interview at a hotel in the North Korean capital.

The U.S. State Department said in a statement that it was “aware of media reports that a U.S. citizen was detained in North Korea”, but had “no further information to share due to privacy considerations”.

Earlier this month, CNN reported that North Korea had detained another USA citizen on suspicion of spying.

Bae was released in November, 2014, along with fellow American Matthew Miller, after a secret mission to Pyongyang led by U.S. intelligence chief James Clapper.

Last October, it freed a South Korean national with a USA green card after holding him for six months.

Only the 15-member Security Council can refer the situation in North Korea to the ICC, but diplomats say China, North Korea’s main benefactor, would likely veto such a move.

The Korean Peninsula remains in a technical state of war because the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.

A sunrise is seen through a barbed-wire fence at the Imjingak, near the Demilitarized zone (DMZ) separating South and North Korea on January 8, 2016 in Paju, South Korea.