South Korean court finds blogger guilty of blogging positively about North Korea

Otto Frederick Warmbier entered North Korea as a tourist and “was caught committing a hostile act against the state”, which it said was “tolerated and manipulated by the USA government”.

A retired US ambassador who used his connections to help negotiate the release of an American held by North Korea in 2014 said he doesn’t expect to be involved in any talks with the country over a detained American student.

“The objective is very clear”, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken said in an interview with NPR.

The University of Virginia’s online student directory lists Otto Frederick Warmbier as a commerce undergraduate.

– United Nations human rights special rapporteur for North Korea Marzuki Darusman said supreme leader Kim Jong Un should be held criminally responsible for failing to improve atrocious human rights conditions in the country since he took over.

However, China’s leverage over Pyongyang is mitigated by its overriding fear of a North Korean collapse and the prospect of a reunified, US-allied Korea directly on its border.

The group says they are assisting the U.S. State Department closely in this situation.

Gareth Johnson of China-based Young Pioneer Tours confirmed Mr Warmbier was on one of its tours and said he had been detained in North Korea on January 2.

An official at the USA embassy in the South Korean capital Seoul said it was aware of the reported arrest.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye offered a “creative” solution to stalled six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear programme – cut Pyongyang from the equation and make them five-party negotiations instead.

Max says school officials are in communication with Warmbier’s family, which includes two sisters in Wyoming schools.

Pyongyang has in the past used detained USA citizens to extract high-profile visits from the United States, with which it has no formal diplomatic relations.

In a letter sent Friday to Obama, Kasich wrote North Korea “should be called upon either to provide immediate evidence of Mr. Warmbier’s alleged anti-state activities or to discharge Mr. Warmbier from custody immediately”. And that he “was under the manipulation of the USA government”. Earlier this month, CNN reported a Korean-American man was being held on charges of spying.

Four days before Pyongyang tested a supposed H-bomb, authorities arrested a 21-year-old American on vacation.

The Korean Peninsula has been in a technical state of war since the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice rather than a peace treaty, and some 28,500 American troops are stationed in South Korea. “We’re really trying hard to respect the family’s privacy”, she said.