North Korea Says Will Treat U.S. Detainees Under 'Wartime Law'

[Purveyor]

Source: Reuters

North Korea said on Monday it had told the United States it will cut the only channel of communication between them, at the United Nations in New York, after Washington blacklisted leader Kim Jong Un last week for human rights abuses.

All matters related to the United States, including the handling of U.S. citizens detained by Pyongyang, will be conducted under its "wartime law," its official KCNA news agency said.

--CLIP
"As the United States will not accept our demand for the immediate withdrawal of the sanctions measure, we will be taking corresponding actions in steps," KCNA said.

"As the first step, we have notified that the New York contact channel that has been the only existing channel of contact will be completely severed," it said.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-southkorea-usa-northkorea-idUSKCN0ZQ107

[riversedge]

1. NK has two US citizens in their jails..

.........U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby declined to comment specifically on the North Korean statement but said such rhetoric "obviously is not doing anything to ease tensions."

Two Americans are currently known to be detained in North Korea. Otto Warmbier, a University of Virginia student, was sentenced in March to 15 years of hard labor for trying to steal an item with a propaganda slogan and Korean-American Kim Dong Chul is serving a 10-year sentence for espionage, according to North Korean state media.

Kirby repeated a call for North Korea to release the Americans from "improper and unjust detention" and stressed the need for it to adhere to its Vienna Convention commitment to allow consular access.

[uawchild]

3. What was Otto Warmbier thinking?

Stealing a propaganda poster in North Korea? The guy had cheese for brains.

Wasn't he a CIA intern or some type of state department intern? I keep getting the nagging suspicion that some old guys where he was interning didn't like him and put him up to the stunt, hoping he would get caught. lol

Supposedly, he had a metal tube of some sort that he intended to smuggle the poster out of North Korea in.

I mean, a metal tube?

Like the North Koreans don't at least x-ray departing American's luggage? Honestly, the entire incident sounded crazy.

[MiniMe]

2. Quick, send Dennis Rodman over to free them! nt