The State Department confirmed Tuesday it is sending an envoy on human rights to North Korea to seek the release of American prisoner Kenneth Bae, reports Reuters.
Robert King will travel to Pyongyang on Friday. The special envoy for North Korean human rights issues will ask that Bae be pardoned and granted “special amnesty on humanitarian grounds so that he can be reunited with his family and seek medical treatment,”
Bae has spent ten months in a North Korea prison. That’s more time than any American prisoner in recent memory. He was recently hospitalized after losing 50 pounds.
His family has recently raised its profile in an effort to generate more publicity about Kenneth’s plights and pressure the US to act.
“Anybody who knows him knows he doesn’t have a hostile bone in his body,” his younger sister Terri Chung told the Daily Breeze. “He’s trying to remain strong, but he really hopes to be able to come home.
“We try to do whatever we can to reach out to people, but we are powerless,” she added. “It’s not really up to us at all.”
Euna Lee and Laura Ling, the sister of Lisa Ling, were held in North Korea for five months in 2009 before President Clinton won their release They are urging the public to write letters to Kenneth at [email protected]. The two recall how important letters from home were important to them during their captivity.