Playing the persuasion game with North Korea is one of the more difficult tasks Trump has set for himself. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:
In two welcome signs of de-escalation after yesterday’s sudden spike in bellicose rhetoric, moments ago North Korea released a Canadian man from prison on humanitarian grounds, the Korean Central News Agency reported on Wednesday. He was serving a life sentence in the country for anti-state activities. As CGTN adds, Rim Hyon Su, also known as Rev. Lim Hyeon-soo was sentenced to life in prison with hard labor in December 2015.
The release was expected following yesterday’s news that Canadian special envoy, Daniel Jean, national security advisor to the prime minister of Canada, and his party had arrived in Pyongyang on Tuesday.
As the
WSJ adds, and as we said yesterday, the release of Rev. Lim Hyeon-soo could also lower tensions between North Korea and the Western world. However, hours before Lim was released, North Korea and Donald Trump exchanged heated public threats, which unleashed a “risk off” shockwave around the globe.
Lim’s Toronto-area church has said he visited the North more than 100 times since 1997 and helped set up an orphanage and nursing home. Last year, Lim told CNN he spent eight hours a day digging holes at a labor camp where he had not seen any other prisoners. Lim, 62, was arrested by North Korea in 2015 and given a lifetime sentence of hard labor in December that year for conducting “hostile deeds” against the state. Lim’s detention of more than two years surpassed that of Kenneth Bae, a Korean-American missionary whose imprisonment in North Korea was the longest known for a U.S. citizen. Mr. Bae was released in late 2014, roughly two years after his detention.
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