US retiree held in N. Korea due to 'misunderstanding'

Los Angeles (AFP) - North Korea has detained for more than three weeks an 85-year-old American retiree who was on an organized tour due to a "misunderstanding," friends and relatives said Wednesday.

Korean war veteran Merrill Newman's son Jeff said "we haven't heard anything" about the reasons for the October 26 detention.

"We worked through the State Department from the day that he was supposed to depart... That started the diplomatic wheels turning, but we've heard nothing," the younger Newman told CNN television.

"This is a misunderstanding. My father is a veteran, and wanted to see the country and culture he has been interested in for years."

The day before he was to depart, Newman met with North Korean officials, who discussed his Army service in the war more than 50 years earlier, the son told the San Jose Mercury News in California.

The next day, five minutes before take-off on the plane taking him out of the country, he was escorted off the plane, Jeff Newman said.

The elder Newman, who usually lives in a California retirement home, "arranged this with a travel agent that was recommended and said was approved by the North Korean government for travel of foreigners," his son insisted on CNN.

"He had all the proper visas."

Media reports suggested that Newman had traveled to North Korea with a friend from Channing House, a retirement home in Palo Alto, outside San Francisco.

His traveling companion, named as Bob Hamrdla, also called his friend's detention "a terrible misunderstanding."

"I hope that the North Koreans see this as a humanitarian matter and allow him to return to his family as soon as possible," said Hamrdla, in a statement cited by the San Jose Mercury News.

A woman who answered the phone at Channing House declined to comment on the statement, reported to have been issued by the retirement home.

But the San Jose newspaper cited a fellow resident, Bill Blankenburg, as saying that Newman's detention had been the talk of the retirement home for weeks.

"We're all distressed, and we feel very strongly in support" of Newman's wife, Blankenburg said.

"I don't think anyone has an idea of what's going on in the minds of the North Koreans."

Newman's son, asked why the elderly man would travel to isolated North Korea, with which the United States has no relations, said it was a veteran's dream, calling his father a "curious cat."

"Just like World War II vets who have had an interest in going back to Normandy, my dad wanted to go back to the northern part of the peninsula," Jeff Newman said.

"He had been to the southern part of the peninsula before and this was a life-long dream of his."

The State Department earlier said it was aware of reports of an American having been detained in North Korea, but declined to comment, citing privacy concerns.

On Tuesday, the agency issued an updated travel advisory, urging Americans to avoid North Korea, which reportedly was "arbitrarily detaining US citizens and not allowing them to depart the country."

Washington's special envoy on North Korea, Glyn Davies, who is visiting Beijing, told journalists Wednesday that he had seen reports of the detention but could not comment because of the US Privacy Act.

The US was "working very hard" through the Swedish embassy in Pyonyang "to try to move this issue along," he said.

"There are officials in Washington who have been in regular contact with the families of those detained," he added.

In general there was "no greater, more important responsibility for the United States to do everything we can" to secure the welfare of American citizens abroad, he said, but detentions of Americans and talks on North Korea's nuclear programme were "separate matters".

"I don't want to make any solid line link" between them, he said, but added that: "We certainly think that North Korea should think long and hard about these cases."

The reclusive North is also holding US national Kenneth Bae, a 45-year-old tour operator arrested a year ago as he entered the northeastern port city of Rason.

He was sentenced to 15 years' hard labor on charges of seeking to topple the government.

The court described Bae, also known by his Korean name Pae Jun-Ho, as a militant Christian evangelist who smuggled inflammatory material into the country and sought to establish a subversive base in Rason.

North Korea has in the past freed detained Americans after visits from high-level emissaries.