TOKYO -- North Korea on Friday expelled a U.S. citizen who it said had admitted stealing military secrets, but it added that he was spared a harsher punishment because Washington asked for leniency.
The official Korean Central News Agency, monitored in Tokyo, said U.S. citizen So Sun Dok was caught on Sept. 29 for engaging in espionage on North Korea's military secrets in the Rajin-Sonbong economic trade zone."The organ concerned decided to expel him after fining him because he honestly admitted and apologized for his crime, and the U.S. government repeatedly asked for lenient handling," KCNA said.
"His espionage activity was a grave violation of the sovereignty of the DPRK (North Korea). So he should have been severely punished by the law of the DPRK," it said.
The agency did not say for whom or for what country the American was spying.
But KCNA said: "The DPRK granted So Sun Dok consular access and gave him humanitarian aid under DPRK-U.S. tentative agreement on the consular protection of their citizens which was signed in December 1994."
U.S. and North Korean officials are holding a series of talks this week in Berlin about how to improve relations.
Washington lifted some restrictions on trade and travel in North Korea in September in return for a pledge by Pyongyang to freeze long-range missile tests.
Korea watchers say impoverished North Korea would like to build on the easing of trade restrictions which had been imposed for 50 years and move towards normalising ties with the West.
Stalinist North Korea expelled at least two U.S. citizens over espionage charges last year.
In August 1998, North Korea expelled a U.S. citizen for spying for rival South Korea and distributing anti-North Korea propaganda materials.
Two months later, a Korean-American college president was expelled for what Pyongyang said was spying for South Korea's main intelligence unit.