The sad saga of American missionary Kenneth Bae continues to be sad, as he told reporters in a Pyongyang press conference that he would be released if America agreed to cooperate with North Korea. He also confessed to committing crimes against the government, something that should be taken with a grain of salt. Many former North Korean prisoners have said that they are often forced to admit to guilt. As the AP says:
“We shouldn’t take Kenneth Bae’s comments merely as his own,” said Kim Jin Moo, a North Korea expert at the state-run Korea Institute for Defense Analyses in Seoul. “The reason why North Korea had Kenneth Bae make this statement … is that they want Washington to reach out to them.”
Bae was arrested in November of 2012, and sentenced to 15 years of hard labor last May. He was in the news recently when Dennis Rodman said that he had no intentions of pleading with the North Korean government on his behalf …