North Korea | American detainee lands back home in Ohio

American detainee Jeffrey Fowle

A U.S. man detained for nearly half a year in North Korea has landed back home.
Officials say a plane carrying Jeffrey Fowle landed yesterday morning at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.
The State Department announced Tuesday that the 56-year-old Fowle had been released. The news came about six months after he was taken into custody after leaving a Bible at a nightclub. Christian evangelism is considered a crime in North Korea.
He had been awaiting trial — the only one of three Americans held by Pyongyang who had not been convicted of charges.
The two others were each sentenced to years in North Korean prisons after court trials that lasted no more than 90 minutes. The three Americans entered North Korea separately.
Fowle was flown out of North Korea on a U.S. military jet that was spotted at Pyongyang’s international airport Tuesday by two Associated Press journalists. There was no immediate explanation for the release of Fowle, who was whisked to the U.S. territory of Guam before heading back to his wife and three children in Ohio.
State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf said Tuesday that Fowle was seen by doctors and appeared to be in good medical health. She declined to give more details about his release except to thank the government of Sweden, which has an embassy in Pyongyang, for its “tireless efforts.”
Harf would not say whether any American officials had intervened directly with the North Koreans.
Relations between Washington and Pyongyang, never warm, are at a particularly low point, and the U.S. has sought unsuccessfully for months to send a high-level representative to North Korea to negotiate acquittals for all three men.
In Berlin, Secretary of State John Kerry said “there was no quid pro quo” for the release of Fowle.
“We are very concerned about the remaining American citizens who are in North Korea, and we have great hopes that North Korea will see the benefit of releasing them also as soon as possible,” Kerry told reporters.
“We’re in constant touch with their families, we’re working on their release, we’ve talked to the Chinese and others, and we have a high focus on it,” he said.
There was no immediate comment from the government of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The United States has no diplomatic relations with North Korea and strongly warns American citizens against traveling to the country.

s. korea dismantles border christmas tree

South Korea has pulled down a 43-year-old front-line Christmas tower that North Korea viewed as propaganda warfare, with officials saying Wednesday the structure was unsafe.
The massive steel tower was demolished last week and South Korea plans to build a park in its place, according to South Korea’s Defense Ministry and local city officials.
South Korea stopped the lightening of the tower in 2004 as relations with North Korea warmed during an era of reconciliation. But it allowed Christian groups to light the tower in 2010 and 2012 as tensions spiked following two attacks that killed 50 South Koreans and a banned long-range rocket test by North Korea.
The tower, which was located about 3 km from the border, sat on a peak high enough for North Koreans living in border towns to see it.
South Korean Defense Ministry officials denied media speculation that the tower was dismantled as a conciliatory gesture aimed at improving ties with North Korea.

Andrew Welsh-Huggins , AP