North Korea Says It Will Deport American Who Tried To Enter From China

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea will deport a U.S. citizen it detained a month ago for illegally entering the isolated country, state media announced Friday, in an apparent gesture of goodwill amid the stalled nuclear talks with the United States.

The North’s decision to release the American, whom it identified as Bruce Byron Lowrance, is likely to be welcomed by Washington as a conciliatory gesture. In the past, North Korea has held Americans on similar charges for prolonged periods, in some cases freeing them only after high-profile figures from the United States went to Pyongyang, the North’s capital, to ask for their release.

Lowrance was detained Oct. 16 while illegally crossing into North Korea from China, the North’s official Korean Central News Agency reported. Lowrance said he had entered the country under the direction of the CIA, according to the report.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in a statement Friday, thanked North Korea for its cooperation with the Swedish embassy in facilitating his release. The Swedes look after U.S. interests in North Korea because the United States does not have diplomatic relations with the country.

“The safety and well-being of Americans remains one of the highest priorities of the Trump Administration,” Pompeo said.

It was not the first time Lowrance had tried to enter North Korea. Last November, he was detained by South Korean soldiers as he approached the heavily militarized border between the Koreas.

South Korean officials later said Lowrance, who was reported to be in his late 50s, had given “confusing” and “contradictory” statements about wanting to help resolve the North’s nuclear dispute with Washington. Lowrance was deported to the United States.

Coincidentally, on the same day last November that Lowrance tried to cross the inter-Korean border from the south, a North Korean soldier did so successfully from the north, making a dramatic escape from the country in which his fellow soldiers shot him multiple times. The soldier made it to the South and survived.

The North Korean news agency’s report did not say when Lowrance would be deported.

North Korea released three U.S. detainees in May after Pompeo visited Pyongyang to pick them up. North Korea treated the releases as a goodwill gesture aimed at facilitating its leader Kim Jong Un’s summit meeting with President Donald Trump in Singapore in June.

But not all U.S. detainees have been so lucky. Otto Warmbier, a university student who was convicted of trying to steal a propaganda poster, died last year just days after being released from North Korea in a coma, after 17 months in captivity.