North Korea has detained a US citizen on suspicion of "hostile acts" against the regime, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported Sunday.
The regime described Kim Hak-song as "a man who was doing business in relation to the operation of Pyongyang University of Science and Technology." KCNA said the American was detained Saturday, but did not release more details on his alleged crime.
Kim, an ethnic Korean, was born in Jilin, China and educated at a university in California, two people who said they studied with him in the United States told CNN. They described Kim as being committed to improving North Korea's agricultural economy.
Classmate David Kim said that Kim Hak-song came to the United States in the mid-1990s.
"He was a very diligent, hardworking man determined to help people in North Korea," David Kim said.
He said that Kim Hak-song became US citizen in the 2000s and returned to China after about 10 years of living in the United States. He still has family members in China and Korea, David Kim said.
Kim Hak-song also majored in agriculture at a university in Yanbian, China, and two years ago went to Pyongyang, according to David Kim.
"Professor Kim was a man who would call North Korea as his own country. He went to Pyongyang to devote himself to the development of North Korea's agricultural technology so that the North can be self-sufficient with food," David Kim said.
Kim Hak-song ran projects aimed at improving agricultural yields at Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, David Kim said.
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