SEOUL: North Korea sentenced a South Korean missionary to hard labour for life after accusing him of espionage and setting up an underground church, state media said yesterday, the latest Christian preacher to run into trouble in the secretive state.
Prosecutors had sought a death sentence for Kim Jeong-Wook, identified by the North’s official news agency KCNA as Kim Jong Uk, during Friday’s trial.
However, according to KCNA, Kim confessed his guilt -- including state subversion, espionage, anti-state propaganda and agitation, and illegal entry into the country -- and “sincerely repented.”
“The accused admitted to all his crimes,” KCNA said in its report on the trial.
“He committed anti-DPRK religious acts, malignantly hurting the dignity of the supreme leadership of the DPRK (North Korea) overseas and tried to infiltrate into Pyongyang ... for the purpose of setting up underground church and gathering information about the internal affairs of the DPRK while luring its inhabitants into South Korea and spying on the DPRK.”
Volcano ash grounds flights
PERTH: Some flights between Australia and southeast Asia and all domestic flights operating out of Darwin airport in the country’s north were cancelled yesterday after the eruption of Sangeang Api in Indonesia’s south produced a large cloud of ash.
International flights to and from Australia to Singapore, East Timor and the Indonesian holiday island of Bali were among those cancelled, including those departing from Australia’s eastern seaboard after an ash cloud from Sangeang Api’s initial eruption on Friday evening tracked across central Australia.
“The volcano is undergoing a sustained, rather significant eruption at the moment, so for the last 10 hours we’ve been observing large masses of volcanic ash being generated,” Emile Jansons, manager of the Darwin Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre said.
Agencies
