N/Korea Frees Canadian Pastor Hyeon Soo Lim

North Korea has released Canadian pastor Hyeon Soo Lim after more than two and a half years in detention, state-run news agency KCNA said on Wednesday.

Lim, North Korea’s longest-held western prisoner in decades, was serving a life sentence of hard labor after being convicted of crimes against the state in December 2015.

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Lim was “released on sick bail” by North Korea’s top court for “humanitarian” reasons, KCNA said.

The 62-year-old suffered health complications, including “dramatic” weight loss, a family spokeswoman Lisa Pak said.

A plane carrying senior Canadian officials, a medical doctor, and a letter to North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un, landed in Pyongyang on Monday, Pak said.

Lim’s release comes amid heightened tensions between Washington and Pyongyang, with US President Donald Trump threatening the North with “fire and fury” on Tuesday.

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North Korea in retaliation threatened a missile strike on the US Pacific territory of Guam and said North Korea would “turn the US mainland into the theater of a nuclear war” at any sign of an impending American attack.

Lim’s release also comes less than two months after American university student Otto Warmbier died, days after he was released by North Korea.

Warmbier was on a sightseeing tour of North Korea when he was detained in early 2016 and later charged with attempting to steal a propaganda poster from his hotel.

He died from a brain injury he sustained while in custody.

The US State Department has since announced a travel ban that will take effect next month, preventing nearly all US citizens from visiting North Korea, with the exception of journalists and humanitarian workers.

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