“Pyongyang will neither make any compromise nor conduct negotiations with the US over the issue of American criminals nor take any humanitarian measures as long as Bae Jun Ho (Kenneth Bae’s Korean name) keeps spouting invectives against North Korea,” Efe news on Tuesday cited a statement as saying.
American nationals now in custody in North Korea will never be able to go back to the US, the statement said.
North Korea insisted that this was just a warning and accused the US of being responsible for a false propaganda campaign led by Kenneth Bae since his release two years ago.
Bae, freed in November 2014 after serving two years of a 15-year prison sentence for alleged attempts to spread Christianity in North Korea, has published a book on his experiences as a prisoner in the Communist country and has criticised the regime’s human rights abuses on various occasions.
Pyongyang said it provided everything to Bae during his prison life from a humanitarian point of view and called the missionary ungrateful and a “Judas”.