The situation with Kenneth Bae, the American tour-operator imprisoned in the DPRK

Last week, North Korea publicly announced that an American tourist and tour-operator travelling in North Korea has now been sentenced to fifteen years of hard labor for attempting to "overthrow the government". While the DPRK government hasn't officially stated any further details, Kenneth Bae was supposedly in the communist state for humanitarian reasons: feeding malnourished children, taking pictures of them, and documenting the extremely poor living conditions to raise awareness for the rest of the world (something the North Korean government doesn't look highly upon) (source). Other sources explain that Bae is a devout christian missionary, visiting North Korea to proselytize and convert its citizens to Christianity (which is completely illegal in almost all communist countries) (source). Of course, humanitarian aid and religious work are not mutually-exclusive; for whichever reason, an American has been convicted of crime in North Korea, and he is still being kept in one of the country's labor camps at the time of this writing.

North Korea is infamous for having the one of the worst human rights records of the 21st century. Within its borders is an expansive, "secret" network of forced-labor camps all over the country, where citizens are wheeled away from their homes and into remote locations in the mountains, sentenced to doing hard labor in torturous conditions for many years - usually the rest of their lives. Citizens receive these sentences for political offenses, or for being denounced as politically unreliable by the state. All it takes is one minor mistake - a small slip of the tongue - to do or say something politically incorrect, and citizens may be captured by incredibly oppressive government officials who will ensure punishment. Kenneth Bae is presumably being kept in one of these camps.

During a press briefing last week in Washington, DC, spokesperson Patrick Ventrell briefly spoke about the situation:

I do have only one update from yesterday [...] and that’s to say that we – some of you had asked about our contact with Mr. Bae’s family. And I can confirm that we remain in close contact with Mr. Bae’s family. We last spoke to them yesterday, and so we’ve been in constant communication with them. But I don’t have an update in terms of Sweden’s access to Mr. Bae.

When asked if he had communicated directly with the North Korean government regarding Bae's captivity through any other channels (other than publicly stating want for Bae's amnesty and release), Mr. Ventrell responded:

I don’t have anything for you on that one way or another, other than to say that we continue to have channels and ways to communicate with the North Koreans. (source)

While the United States does not have any formal diplomatic relations with North Korea, Sweden functions as the protecting power of the United State's interests for cases such as this one. The Geneva Convention says that when any two sovereign states do not have diplomatic ties with each other, either country may appoint a 3rd party to act as a protecting power and represent its interests. Diplomats from Sweden provided counsel to Kenneth Bae last week and confirmed the reports of his sentencing.

Considering recent events involving North Korea making war-mongering threats and rhetoric toward the United States, and considering also that North Korea has extremely-soured relations with both the United States and South Korea, it was an unfortunate time for Kenneth Bae - an American tourist of South Korean descent - to be travelling in the North. Bae's sentencing may be seen as North Korea simply trying to antagonize the west by destroying the life of a US citizen. Otherwise, it may be a disguised call for help; North Korea has traded away foreign prisoners for food and supply aid in the past.

It's unlikely the UN will do much to resolve this, since interfering with such a complicated area as North Korea involves a lot of effort for only a single person. The best we can hope for is that the US will send over a high level politician to negotiate his release. Keep an eye out for any incoming news regarding his imprisonment and potential release.