An American recently sentenced to six years hard labor by a North Korean court pretended to have secret US information and was deliberately arrested in a bid to become famous and meet US missionary Kenneth Bae in a North Korean prison, state media said yesterday.
Matthew Miller, 25, of Bakersfield, California, had prepared his story in advance and written in a notebook that he was seeking refuge after failing in an attempt to collect information about the US government, state media said.
“He perpetrated the above-said acts in the hope of becoming a ‘world famous guy’ and the ‘second Snowden’ through intentional hooliganism,” KCNA said, referring to former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, wanted by the United States for leaking secrets of its surveillance programs.
“This is an intolerable insult and mockery of the DPRK and he therefore, deserved punishment,” KCNA said, using the North’s official DPRK acronym.
Miller was arrested when he tore up the tourist visa he used to enter the isolated country in April, state media said at the time. He was sentenced to six years hard labor by a North Korean court last Sunday.
“The results of the investigation made it clear that he did so not because of a simple lack of understanding and psychopathology, but deliberately perpetrated such criminal acts for the purpose of directly going to prison,” state media said.
Miller’s case was exacerbated by the fact that his actions followed “reckless remarks” by US Secretary of State John Kerry that described reclusive North Korea as a “country of evil,” state media said.
Kerry in February criticized North Korea as an “evil place” following the publication of an extensive human rights report by United Nations investigators who said North Korean security officials should be tried for crimes related to the systematic starvation, torture and imprisonment of North Koreans.