N.Korea says it's victim of U.S.-backed terrorism
After arresting two TOKYO — American university instructors and laying out what it says was an elaborate, CIAbacked plot to assassinate Kim Jong Un, North Korea is claiming to be the victim of state-sponsored terrorism from the White House. — The assertion comes as the U.S. is considering putting the North back on its list of terror sponsors. But the vitriolic outrage over the alleged
plan to assassinate Kim last month also is being doled out with an unusually big
dollop of retaliation threats. North Korea’s state-run media announced Sunday that an ethnic Korean man
with U.S. citizenship was “intercepted” two days ago by authorities for unspecified hostile acts against the country.
He was identified as Kim Hak Song, an employee of the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology.
That came just days after the North announced the detention of an accounting instructor at the same uni- versity, Kim Sang Dok, also a U.S. citizen, for “acts of hostility aimed to overturn” the country. PUST is North Korea’s only privately funded university and has a large number of foreign teachers, including Americans.
What, if anything, the arrests have to do with the alleged plot is unknown. But they bring to four the number of U.S. citizens now known to be in custody in the North. “Obviously this is concern-
ing,” White House spokes- man Sean Spicer told reporters Monday. “We are wellaware of it, and we are going to work through the embassy of Sweden ... through our State Department to seek
the release of the individuals there.”
Sweden handles U.S. consular affairs in North Korea, including those of American detainees.
The others are Otto Warm- bier, serving a 15-year prison term with hard labor for alleged anti-state acts — he allegedly tried to steal a propaganda banner at his tour- ist hotel — and Kim Dong Chul, serving a 10-year term with hard labor for alleged espionage.
The reported arrest of another “Mr. Kim” — the North Korean man allegedly at the center of the assassina- tion plot — is more ominous.
According to state media reports that began Friday, he is a Pyongyang resident who was “ideologically corrupted and bribed” by the CIA and South Korea’s National Intelligence Service while work-
ing in the timber industry in Siberia in 2014.
The reports say Kim — his full name has not been provided — was converted into a “terrorist full of repug- nance and revenge against the supreme leadership” of North Korea and collaborated in an elaborate plot to assassinate Kim Jong Un at a series of events.
They allege Kim was in frequent contact through satel
lite communications with the “murderous demons” of the NIS and CIA, who instructed him to use a biochemical substance that is the “knowhow of the CIA” and that the hardware, supplies and funds would be borne by the South Korean side. Kim Jong Un attended the
military parade on April 15 and made several other appearances around that time to mark the anniversary of his late grandfather’s birthday.
The initial reports of the plot concluded with a vow by the Ministry of State Security to “ferret out to the last one” the organizers, conspirators
and followers of the plot, which it called “state-spon
sored terrorism.” The North Korean reports also said a “Korean-style anti-terrorist attack” would begin immediately.