Swedish diplomats visit American detained in N. Korea
By Kim Young-jin
Staff reporter
The United States disclosed Friday that Swedish diplomats, representing U.S. interests in North Korea, were granted consular access to an American citizen held there for illegal entry, amid reports he had been hospitalized after a suicide attempt.
State Department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters in Washington, D.C. that the diplomats visited with Aijalon Gomes, 30, but did not disclose details on his condition or whereabouts, citing privacy issues.
“At the request of the DPRK, Swedish diplomats in Pyongyang visited Gomes in their capacity as the U.S. protecting power in North Korea,” the spokesman said. DPRK stands for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the North’s official name.
The Swedish Embassy represents U.S. interests in the North as the United States does not have diplomatic ties with Pyongyang.
Toner urged Pyongyang to release Gomes on humanitarian grounds, and expressed the U.S. government’s concern over his welfare.
Earlier in the day, the North’s state-run media reported Gomes had been hospitalized after the suicide attempt, which it attributed to despair that the U.S. government had “not taken any measure for his freedom.”
Gomes was sentenced to eight years of hard labor in May after being found guilty of illegally entering the country in January.
Pyongyang last month threatened to worsen his punishment in retaliation for a “hostile approach” taken by the United States in addressing the deadly sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan on March 26.
The report on the suicide attempt came just before the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) adopted a statement that condemned the attack, which killed 46 seamen. Due to opposition from China, the North’s only major ally, the statement did not directly blame the North.
Pyongyang responded to the statement by signaling its willingness to rejoin international negotiations on its denuclearization, in what some analysts characterized as a restrained response.
Gomes, a reportedly devout Christian who had been teaching English in South Korea, is the fourth American to be held in the North since early last year.
He crossed the border in an apparent show of solidarity with American missionary Robert Park, 28, who was released in February after crossing the Chinese border on Christmas Day to draw attention to human rights atrocities in North Korea.
American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee were released in August after a visit to Pyongyang by former U.S. President Bill Clinton. They had been detained in March 2009 while reporting on North Korean defectors for an independent U.S. cable television network.