WASHINGTON (Yonhap) -- The United States Tuesday urged North Korea to release an American citizen being held for unknown reasons.
"We would call on the government of North Korea to release this citizen on humanitarian grounds," State Department spokesman Mark Toner said. "We would ask that they respect and treat this citizen in a manner consistent with international human rights law."
Toner said the individual was held in North Korea "recently," adding, "I don't have any details on what this individual was doing in North Korea. We don't have any information about allegations. We don't even know what this individual is being held for."
The U.S. does not have diplomatic ties with North Korea, and the Swedish embassy in Pyongyang handles consular affairs involving American citizens.
"We have gone through the Swedish protecting powers there, and they've been able to visit him or her," the spokesman said, refusing to elaborate, citing privacy protections.
The detention comes just weeks before former U.S. President Jimmy Carter travels to Pyongyang to try to broker peace between the two countries whose relations have chilled in recent years over the North's nuclear and missile tests and provocations against South Korea, a major U.S. ally.
Toner said he was not sure whether the State Department will ask Carter to bring the citizen back home.
"He's good at this," he said, but added, "I don't have any information whether we would."
Carter visited Pyongyang in August to bring back Aijalon Gomes of Boston, sentenced to eight years in a labor and re-education camp and fined about US$700,000 for illegal entry in January.
In another high-profile visit to North Korea, former U.S. President Bill Clinton flew to Pyongyang in August 2009 to win the release of two American journalists caught months earlier while on a reporting tour covering North Korean defectors.
Former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson successfully negotiated the release of two American citizens held in North Korea in the 1990s.
A U.S. pilot was detained in North Korea in 1994 when his military chopper was shot down after straying across the border, and another American citizen, Evan Hunziker, was apprehended after he swam the Yalu River to North Korea from the Chinese side in 1996.
Both spent several months in the North before Richardson, then a U.S. congressman, visited Pyongyang to successfully negotiate their release.