American detained in North Korea, Swedish Embassy confirms

A former Korean-American professor was arrested in North Korea last week, becoming the third U.S. citizen to be detained by the communist country as of late, according to sources Sunday.

An U.S. citizen was detained in North Korea on Friday at Pyongyang's Sunan airport, South Korea's Yonhap News Agency reported on Sunday afternoon using anonymous sources. If confirmed, the man will join two other U.S. citizens in detention there, 22-year-old Otto Warmbier and 62-year-old Kim Dong Chul, both of whom are serving sentences of hard labor of 15 and 10 years respectively. Yonhap alleges the detainee is a something Korean-American with a surname of Kim who works as a professor at the Yanbian University of Science and Technology (YUST) in Yanji, a Chinese city on the border with North Korea. A report in Christianity Today's Korean-language service on Sunday further reported this claim, but specifically named the man as Kim Sang-duk. The website of Yanbian University features the profile of professor named Kim Sang-duk, describing him as having a masters in accounting. A YUST document from 2007 lists Kim as having attended Riverside College in California and says he previously

North Korea detained a U.S. citizen in Pyongyang on Friday, South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported Sunday, adding another potential flashpoint between the U.S. and North Korea at a time of increasingly heated rhetoric.