85-Year-Old American Man Released from North Korea

Merrill Newman, the 85-year-old grandfather, who was detained by the North Korean government at the end of October, was finally released and send home to his family on Friday, December 6. On Monday, Newman released a 2-page statement about his ordeal, explaining that he failed to realize that even innocent remarks about the Korean War can cause big problems for foreigners.

“I innocently asked my North Korean guides whether some of those who fought in the war in the Mt. Kuwol area might still be alive and expressed an interest in possibly meeting them if they were,” Newman wrote. “The North Koreans seem to have misinterpreted my curiosity as something more sinister.”

Newman said that he was taken good care of as far as his health went, but that he was under constant guard. He was also warned that failure to “fully cooperate” could result in a very extended stay in North Korea: he could wind up in jail with a 15-year sentence for espionage.

He also said that he was compelled to make the videotape “confession” released by the North Koreans and that he hoped people would realize that these were not his own word, particularly by virtue of the fact that the statement was delivered in the poor English dictated by his captors.

A North Korea expert said that Mr. Newman has nothing to fear from North Korea now that his is back in his homeland. “They’re not going to go after him,” said Thomas Henriksen, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. “There are too many people they hate more.”

Mr. Henriksen pointed out that the goal of the North Koreans in the entire incident was to make their world enemies look even more evil to their own people, and they accomplished that with the videotaped confession they forced Mr. Newman to make.