The State Department plans on working through the Swedish Embassy in North Korea to free four Americans being held by Kim Jong Un’s regime, the White House said Monday.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer said President Trump is aware that the North Korean government has detained four Americans. Kim alleges the four Americans are either spies or subversive agents in the country.
The U.S. does not have direct diplomatic relations with North Korea, so Spicer said it would have to work through an ally.
“Obviously this is concerning, we’re well aware of it,” he said. “And, we’re going to work through the Embassy of Sweden that has an embassy in North Korea to get the release of the individuals being held there.”
The North Korean government has detained two American professors who were working at Pyongyang University of Science and Technology in recent months. Two other Americans have been sentenced to 15 years of hard labor and 10 years in prison for removing a political sign and espionage, respectively.
According to CNN, the latest American to be detained is Kim Hak-son. He was doing agricultural development work with the university’s farm, according to the report.
Kim is an ethnic Korean born in China who came to the U.S. in the mid-1990s to study in California. He became a U.S. citizen in the 2000s and then returned to China. He’s been in North Korea for about two years.
