The State Department said Friday that North Korea had confirmed that it was holding an American citizen, whom family and friends have identified as an octogenarian veteran of the Korean War inexplicably detained there last month as he was concluding an officially approved nine-day tour of the country.
North Korea’s confirmation broke nearly four weeks of silence by the North Korean authorities about the detained veteran, Merrill Newman, 85, of Palo Alto, Calif. It was conveyed to the State Department by Sweden’s embassy in the North, which represents American interests in North Korea.
Mr. Newman’s wife, Lee, issued a public statement beseeching North Korea to let him come home, describing his detention there as “some dreadful misunderstanding.”
Jen Psaki, the State Department spokeswoman, told reporters at a regular news briefing in Washington that Sweden’s embassy had “been informed by North Korea of the detention of a U.S. citizen.” She would not identify the citizen by name because of the legal requirements of the department’s privacy policy, but family members had said this week that the person was Mr. Newman.
“We are working in close coordination with representatives of the Embassy of Sweden to resolve this issue, and they also have requested, actually on a daily basis, consular access,” Ms. Psaki said.
Mr. Newman is the second American citizen seized by the North Korean authorities over the past year, a barometer of the deeply estranged relations between the United States and North Korea, which remain in a technical state of war after 60 years.
Last November, Kenneth Bae, 44, an American Christian missionary and tour operator, was seized in the North Korean port of Rason and later convicted of hostile acts against the government. He is serving a 15-year sentence of hard labor.
It is unclear what accusations, if any, Mr. Newman may face from the North Koreans, who have not explained why they have detained him. His family has said that he has a heart ailment and that it was unknown whether a 30-day supply of medicine forwarded to the Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang, the capital, which it delivered to the North Korean Foreign Ministry, had ever reached Mr. Newman.
There has been speculation that Mr. Newman’s detention was precipitated by what his traveling companion on the tour, Bob Hamrdla, later described as a difficult conversation Mr. Newman had with North Korean officials concerning the war.
The newspaper Military Times reported Friday that another Merrill Newman, 84, who lives in Oregon, also was a Korean War veteran and that he had won a Silver Star in 1952 for leading a Marine platoon in attacks that inflicted heavy casualties on North Korean troops. The account appeared to raise the possibility that the North Korean authorities had mistaken one Merrill Newman for the other.
But Jeff Newman, the detained American’s son, has told reporters that there is no indication that the North Koreans have confused the two.
This story, "," originally appeared in The New York Times.