U.S. envoy: N. Korea using U.S. detainees as pawns

The situation looks bleak for the Americans currently detained in North Korea as the country continues to reject U.S. offers to send a high-level envoy to negotiate their release, an Obama administration official said Wednesday. A North Korean court just sentenced Matthew Miller of California to six years of hard labor after he allegedly tore up his visa in the airport and asked for asylum. Jeffrey Fowle of Ohio is awaiting his trial after being arrested for leaving a Bible in a club in May.

The Obama administration had originally offered to send Robert King, U.S. Special Envoy on Human Rights, to negotiate the release of Kenneth Bae, who is currently serving a 15-year sentence for “hostile acts.” King has suggested such negotiations could open the door to future diplomatic relations, which are currently hung-up on Pyongyang’s nuclear program. But North Korea continues to balk, potentially holding out for a more “high ranking” official, such as a former president, as it has in the past. Such an envoy would provide North Korea with much-desired propaganda material, but King said Washington will not give in to such efforts to “extort” political gain on Korea’s part by using the detainees as pawns. King didn’t specify who Washington would be willing to send after North Korea’s earlier rejections.

“The issues that are hampering contact are fundamental issues about, in particular, North Korea’s nuclear weapons program,” King said. “But certainly, releasing the American citizens that are held there is an important step that might lead to broader discussions and contacts in other areas. The real question is whether the North Koreans want anything other than trying to create problems.”

King criticized North Korea’s treatment of the detainees, as well as the interviews with the press, which he believes were staged.

“By the way they glance frigidly to the side, you can tell somebody has coached them to say this,” King said.

But the difficulties of gaining freedom for the current detainees apparently has not deterred others from trying to get into the closed country. South Korean border guards detained an American on Tuesday they believed was trying to swim across the river into North Korea, according to a South Korean official.

The man, whose name has not been released but was identified as a 29-year-old-computer repairman from Texas, wanted to meet Kim Jong Un, according to a South Korean news outlet. South Korean officials said they could not verify the report.

While 27,000 North Koreans have defected since the end of the Korean War, Americans have apparently found enough interest in the closed country to draw them in the other direction. Many Christian missionaries cross the border, hoping to spread the gospel in the country which, while claiming to offer religious freedom, is in reality one of the most ruthless Christian persecutors in the world. In other cases, U.S. soldiers stationed in South Korea have tried to cross the border to escape duty, prompted by problems at home issues or mental health issues, said John Delury, an Asia expert at Yonsei University in Seoul.

Regardless of the cause, any detainees cause a significant foreign relations complication for the United States, which still maintains no formal diplomatic relations with North Korea. And North Korea seems content to wait to get what it wants.

“The North Koreans are in no hurry,” Andrei Lankov, a North Korea expert at Kookmin University in South Korea, said. “It's a sellers’ market. They say, ‘This is our price: a senior visit and some concessions. These are our goods, these Americans. If you don’t want to pay, that’s your problem. We can wait.’”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.