Toronto: Hyeun-soo Lim, the Korean Canadian church leader sentenced to life in prison with hard labor, has been freed on August 9 “on sick bail”, says a North Korean state news agency.
Convicted in December 2015 by the country’s Supreme Court of numerous charges, including an attempt to overthrow the government, he had been detained in North Korea since February 2015.
His release comes weeks after 22-year-old American student Otto Warmbier died at home, a week after he had been belatedly freed after his 15-month detention for stealing a small flag from his Pyongyang hotel.
This still leaves three Korean-Americans detained in North Korea, two of whom taught at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology – Tony Kim and Kim Hak Song. Tony Kim, like Hyeun-Soo Lim, was involved with work in orphanages, and it was for this he was apparently detained, not his teaching at the University.
The third, Kim Dong Chul, a South Korea-born businessman and naturalized US citizen, is serving a sentence of 10 years of hard labor for “espionage”.
Meanwhile, a North Korean man, Kim Seung-mo, 61, was arrested in early June on “spying” charges after meeting Christian relatives in China.
Hyeun-Soo Lim, head pastor at the Light Presbyterian Church in Toronto, had visited North Korea more than 100 times to distribute humanitarian aid for nursing homes, day-care centers and orphanages.
Lim’s family had been disappointed in 2015 when Canada’s newly elected government failed in attempts to secure his release.
But his release now comes one day after a special envoy of the Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, had arrived in Pyongyang.
Source: worldwatchmonitor.org