Trump Welcomes Americans Freed By North Korea

U.S President Donald Trump on Thursday welcomed three American citizens freed by the North Korean regime of Kim Jong Un.

Kim Dong Chul, Kim Hak-song and Kim Sang Duk were freed during US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s second visit to the North Korean capital of Pyongyang on Wednesday.

The trio arrived the Joint Base Andrews military airfield in Washington in the early hours of Thursday on a U.S. military medical plane.

The men, who travelled to North Korea on humanitarian missions, were accused of contravening North Korean laws and sentenced to several years’ imprisonment with hard labour.

Trump announced their release in a Twitter update Wednesday, saying: “I am pleased to inform you that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is in the air and on his way back from North Korea with the 3 wonderful gentlemen that everyone is looking so forward to meeting. They seem to be in good health.”

The detainees are returning to the United States as Trump prepares to make history by becoming the first sitting US President to meet face-to-face with a North Korean leader.

Trump’s administration had previously said that if the North Koreans freed the three Americans, it would be viewed as a goodwill gesture ahead of the planned summit between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Kim was reportedly boarding a flight at the airport in Pyongyang on April 22, 2017 when North Korean authorities detained him.

He was later accused of attempting to overthrow the North Korean government.

Kim Hak-song, another US citizen who was working at PUST, was detained on May 7, 2017.

Kim is an agricultural expert who’d been teaching rice-growing at the university, his wife told CNN shortly after he was detained.

Kim, a naturalized US citizen, was born in Jilin, China, one of the provinces that borders North Korea, and is ethnically Korean. He was educated at a university in California. Two people who said they studied with Kim in the US described him as being committed to improving North Korea’s agriculture and economy.

“Professor Kim was a man who would call North Korea as his own country. He went to Pyongyang to devote himself to the development of North Korea’s agricultural technology so that the North can be self-sufficient with food,” said David Kim, his former classmate.

Kim Hak-song was also ordained as an evangelical Christian pastor affiliated with the Oriental Mission Church in Los Angeles, which could have presented problems in the atheist country. While it’s unclear if Kim’s faith had anything to do with his detention, other Americans have been severely punished for acts Pyongyang views as proselytising.