North Korea Says It Deported U.S. Tourist

Updated Dec. 6, 2013 10:41 p.m. ETSEOUL—North Korea said Saturday morning that it had “deported” Merrill E. Newman, freeing the 85-year-old U.S. citizen after more than one month of detention for what it called “hostile acts” against the country.
Mr. Newman, a Korean War veteran who resides in Palo Alto, Calif., visited North Korea with a friend on a private tour in October and was removed by authorities from an outbound flight to Beijing shortly before takeoff.

Merrill E. Newman, 85, reads a document, which North Korean authorities say was an apology that Newman wrote and read in North Korea last month. AP

Reached by telephone in Palo Alto immediately after the North’s initial report, Jeff Newman, the son of Mr. Newman, said he had not yet heard any word of his father’s release and declined further comment.
The announcement of Mr. Newman’s apparent release comes on a day when U.S. Vice President Joe Biden visited the demilitarized zone that separates the two Koreas.
Mr. Biden said in Seoul that North Korea “today released someone they should never have had in the first place,” adding that he spoke directly to Mr. Newman by phone and offered him a ride home on Air Force Two, an offer that Mr. Newman declined.
“As he pointed out, there’s a direct flight to San Francisco, so I don’t blame him, I’d be on that flight too,” Mr. Biden said.
Mr. Biden said he played “no direct role” in Mr. Newman’s release, and said he didn’t know why Pyongyang decided to release him.
But he added that North Korea still has U.S. citizen Kenneth Bae in detention.
“We’re going to demand his release as well,” Mr. Biden said.
In a separate statement, Marie Harf, a deputy spokeswoman for the State Department, urged North Korea to “grant Mr. Bae special amnesty and immediately release him as a humanitarian gesture so that he, too, can return home to his family.”
Mr. Bae, a tour guide and Christian missionary, remains in Pyongyang more than one year after he was first detained and sent to a labor camp.
North Korea’s decision to release Mr. Newman was portrayed by Pyongyang’s official Korea Central News Agency as a “humanitarian” gesture, after taking into consideration “his sincere repentance…and his advanced age and health condition,” according to the report.
North Korea’s report of Mr. Newman’s release comes exactly one week after it displayed what it purported to be a signed confession and apology from Mr. Newman. North Korea said Mr. Newman had entered the country to look for former anticommunist guerrilla fighters from the Korean War.
Mr. Newman asked his tour guides to help him look for veterans of the unit and their descendants, according to the separate lengthy confession that North Korea said was written by Mr. Newman.
North Korea also released a video of Mr. Newman making his alleged confession. He can be seen affixing a red thumbprint to the confession, in which Mr. Newman purports to confess, in nonstandard English, to having “been guilty of a long list of indelible crimes.”
It isn’t clear whether Mr. Newman’s alleged confession was made under duress. North Korea has a track record of forcing detained foreigners to make confessions before their release.
Mr. Newman’s release also comes just days after South Korea’s National Intelligence Service told legislators in Seoul that North Korea’s supreme leader Kim Jong Un had apparently purged his uncle, the de facto No. 2 leader of the isolated country.
The alleged removal of Jang Song Thaek has put many North Korea watchers on guard for signs of any change in policy in Pyongyang.
Write to Jonathan Cheng at jonathan.cheng@wsj.com

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