North Korean authorities have confirmed they have detained an American citizen, the State Department said, while the wife of the 85-year-old Korean War veteran being held there implored authorities to let her husband return to his "anxious, concerned family."
North Korea told the Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang about the detention and said it hasn't granted diplomats access, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters.
The Swedish Embassy is negotiating on behalf of Merrill Newman because the US has no diplomatic ties to North Korea.
In California, Newman's wife, Lee Newman, said in a prepared statement, "The family feels there has been some dreadful misunderstanding leading to his detention.
Her husband was set to end a 10 day tour of North Korea on Oct. 26. But just before he was slated to fly out, he was escorted from his flight by a North Korean official.
"We have had no word on the state of his health, whether or not the medications sent to him through the Swedish Embassy in North Korea have been delivered or why he was detained," she said.
Newman doesn't fit the pattern of other Americans detained by North Korea in recent years.
By all accounts, he wasn't a missionary or a journalist. He had no apparent political or religious agenda for the government of Kim Jong Un. Instead, he visited North Korea as a curious tourist, according to his son, eager to reconnect with a country where he'd served as an infantryman during the Korean War, six decades ago.
The mystery, then, about why Pyongyang has held him for a month has baffled Newman's friends and family - as well as analysts who study North Korea.
"We're concerned about him," said Barbara Ingram, a neighbour n the Channing House retirement community, an 11-story apartment house where the Newmans live.
Newman has been described as an inveterate traveller and long-retired finance executive. His son, Jeffrey Newman, said his father wanted to return to the country where he spent three years during the Korean War.
North Korea has detained at least six Americans since 2009, including two journalists accused of trespassing and several Americans, some of whom are of Korean ancestry, accused of spreading Christianity.
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