26 August 2010 / AP, SEOUL
Former President Jimmy Carter arrived on Wednesday in the capital of communist North Korea on a mission to bring home an American sentenced to eight years’ hard labor for trespassing.
A young North Korean girl handed Carter flowers after he landed at the Pyongyang airport on Wednesday, according to footage aired by TV news agency APTN. Top North Korean nuclear envoy Kim Kye Gwan and No. 2 nuclear official Ri Gun were among officials on hand to welcome Carter with handshakes, according to APTN. The state-run Korean Central News Agency also reported Carter’s arrival in a brief dispatch from Pyongyang. US officials in Washington had said late Monday that Carter would be making the rare journey to Pyongyang to win the release of a 31-year-old imprisoned in North Korea since January. Aijalon Mahli Gomes, from Boston, was convicted in April of crossing into North Korea illegally from China. He was the fourth American detained in North Korea within a year. North Korea had agreed to release Gomes, who was believed to be in ailing health, to Carter if the ex-president made the journey, a senior US official told The Associated Press in Washington. Carter was expected to spend one night in North Korea and return home with Gomes on Thursday, a second US official said. Both spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.
