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North Korea Releases a Video of a U.S. Veteran Confessing to ‘Hostile Acts’

BEIJING — North Korea has accused an American veteran of war crimes and on Saturday released a video of him confessing to what it said were “hostile acts” during the Korean War and while he was visiting the country in October.

The veteran, Merrill Newman, 85, of Palo Alto, Calif., who has been held since Oct. 26, appeared on the video dressed in casual Western clothes and wearing glasses as he read excerpts from an apology written on several sheets of white paper. The text contained several awkward English constructions and grammatical errors.

In the apology, Mr. Newman said he was an adviser for the Kuwol Unit of the United Nations Korea Sixth Partisan Regiment, which served with the Intelligence Bureau of the Far East Command.

A person familiar with Mr. Newman’s military record and his current situation in captivity in North Korea said that Mr. Newman served as an adviser in that unit in 1953 before the armistice. The unit operated behind the lines in North Korea, but Mr. Newman conducted his duties as an adviser on Chodo, an island off the west coast of what is now North Korea, the person said. In the beginning of the video, Mr. Newman mentioned Chodo as the place where he was stationed. The person speaking about Mr. Newman’s situation declined to be identified because of the delicacy of the case.

The Swedish ambassador visited Mr. Newman on Saturday, and told his family that he was in good health and being treated well, according to a statement from the family. The United States has no diplomatic relations with North Korea and has been dealing with Mr. Newman’s situation through the Swedish Embassy, which represents its interests in the North.

“Our focus now is on getting him home quickly to join his loved ones, who miss him deeply,” the statement said. “We are asking that the D.P.R.K. authorities take into account his health and his age and, as an act of humanitarian compassion, allow him to depart immediately for home.” The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or D.P.R.K., is North Korea’s official name.

In the apology, Mr. Newman describes how he wanted to meet “surviving soldiers and pray for the souls of the dead soldiers” from the unit he worked with. If he met any surviving soldiers he planned to put them in touch with members of the Kuwol Partisan Comrades-in-Arms Association who had escaped to South Korea, the apology said.

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In a photo released by the Korean Central News Agency on Saturday, 85-year-old Merrill Newman reads what the agency said is a written apology for his actions during the Korean War.Credit...Kcna/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

An email from Mr. Newman to friends in South Korea telling them of his impending trip to North Korea and his hopes of meeting with relatives of the partisan group is embedded in the video of the apology.

Mr. Newman said in the apology, the text of which was released by the state-run Korean Central News Agency, that he had asked his tour guide to look for families and relatives of the Comrades-in-Arms group, which is described in the apology as “an anti-Communist strategic plot organization.”

In a statement also released by the Korean news agency that accompanied the apology, North Korea characterized Mr. Newman’s activities during the tour as “trying to look for spies and terrorists who conducted espionage and subversive activity” and to “connect them” to an anti-North Korean organization. It charged that Mr. Newman was “slandering” North Korea and had “perpetrated acts of infringing upon the dignity and sovereignty” of the country. The statement also referred to Mr. Newman’s wartime activities.

“As I killed so many civilians and K.P.A. soldiers and destroyed strategic objects in the D.P.R.K. during the Korean War, I committed indelible offensive acts against the D.P.R.K. government and Korean people,” the apology said.

Col. Ben S. Malcom, who commanded a unit of about 800 North Korean anti-Communist partisans during the war, said American soldiers commanded and advised more than 20 partisan units that did everything from raiding North Korean military redoubts to counterfeiting North Korean currency, robbing banks and stealing oxen.

“We were the people who were leading the North Korean guerrilla forces” against the North Korean Army, said Colonel Malcom, 84. “That’s probably the reason they are holding him at the present time,” he said of Mr. Newman. Speaking Saturday from his home in Atlanta, Colonel Malcom said that given the partisan fighters’ destructiveness, he was not surprised at North Korea’s treatment of Mr. Newman.

“I wouldn’t even consider going into North Korea,” he said.

According to American military documents declassified in 1990, the United Nations partisan warfare mission organized in 1951 eventually mobilized about 23,000 guerrillas to fight against North Korea, overseen by about 200 American advisers.

Mr. Newman, a retired technology executive and a world traveler, went to North Korea on a trip organized by a licensed tour group to fulfill a longtime desire to return to the Korean Peninsula, his family said.

There was no indication from North Korea what the next steps in his case would be.

On Saturday, the United States urged North Korea to release Mr. Newman immediately along with another American detainee, Kenneth Bae, said Caitlin Hayden, a White House spokeswoman. Mr. Bae, 44, a Christian missionary, was arrested last year during a visit to North Korea and sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for committing “hostile acts” against the North.

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KCNA claims this hand-written statement with red thumb prints is an apology from Mr. Newman.Credit...KCNA via KNS/Associated Press

In the written apology, which was dated Nov. 9, Mr. Newman is quoted as saying: “If I go back to U.S.A., I will tell the true features of the D.P.R.K. and the life the Korean people are leading.”

The fact that Mr. Newman made a televised apology could lead to his release fairly soon, said Andrei Lankov, an expert on North Korea and the author of “The Real North Korea.”

“So far, such public acts of repentance have usually been followed by the release of those detained, and this is likely to happen again,” Mr. Lankov said.

An American Christian missionary, Robert Park, who crossed into North Korea in December 2009 and was held for more than a month, was released shortly after he signed an apology, Mr. Lankov said.

Mr. Newman was pulled off a plane on Oct. 26 as it was preparing to leave North Korea. Something appeared to have gone awry on the last full day of Mr. Newman’s tour when he was asked to talk to one of his guides in the presence of another North Korean and without his traveling companion, a fellow retiree from California, his son, Jeff Newman, said after his father’s detention.

Mr. Newman told his companion, Bob Hamrdla, that the conversation had not gone well and that he had a bad feeling about it, Mr. Newman’s son said.

Jeff Newman had appealed to the North Korean government for the return of his father so that he could be home for Thanksgiving.

The two Americans traveled with two Korean guides on a trip organized by the London-based Juche Travel Services, an outfit that says it appeals to “smart, independent” travelers.

The State Department’s special envoy for North Korea, Glyn T. Davies, said in Tokyo last week that the United States was considering strengthening economic sanctions against North Korea, partly in response to the situation involving Mr. Newman. After his detention, the State Department stiffened its travel advisory, warning Americans they could be subject to arbitrary arrest if they went to North Korea as tourists.

A correction was made on 
Dec. 1, 2013

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misstated Merrill Newman’s surname in reference to a visit he received from the Swedish ambassador. He is, in fact, Mr. Newman, not Mr. Walker.

How we handle corrections

Michael Schwirtz contributed reporting from New York.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 14 of the New York edition with the headline: North Korea Releases a Video of a U.S. Veteran Confessing to ‘Hostile Acts’. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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