SEATTLE — Kenneth Bae arrived home after years of imprisonment in North Korea, expressing his gratitude to the U.S. government for securing his release and revealing that his time there offered lessons.
And his sister said he had one stipulation for his first meal back home: No Korean food.
Additional Images
“He said, ‘I don’t want Korean food, that’s all I’ve been eating for the last two years,'” Terri Chung said Sunday outside her Seattle church. “We had a late night eating pizza.”
Bae and Matthew Miller, another American who had been held captive in North Korea, landed Saturday night at a Washington state military base after a top U.S. intelligence official secured their release.
“It’s been an amazing two years, I learned a lot, I grew a lot, I lost a lot of weight,” Bae, a Korean-American missionary with health problems, said at Joint Base Lewis-McChord Saturday night. Asked how he was feeling, he said, “I’m recovering at this time.”
Bae, surrounded by family members, spoke briefly to the media after the plane carrying him and Miller landed. He thanked President Obama and the people who supported him and his family. He also thanked the North Korean government for releasing him.
“I just want to say thank you all for supporting me and standing by me,” Bae said. His family has said he suffers from diabetes, an enlarged heart, liver problems and back pain.
Chung said Bae was in better shape when he arrived than his family expected. She said he had spent about six weeks in a North Korean hospital before he returned.
“That helped. As you know, he had gone back and forth between the labor camp and hospital,” she said.
She said he was checked out by a doctor on the flight back to the United States.
His plans for the near future include rest and food and reconnecting with friends and family. Neither his wife nor his children could make it back to Seattle in time for Bae’s homecoming, his sister said.
They plan to gather the whole family together for Thanksgiving,” she said.
Members of Bae’s family, who live near the sprawling military base south of Seattle, met him when he landed. His mother hugged him after he got off the plane. Miller stepped off the U.S. government aircraft a short time later and also was greeted with hugs.
U.S. officials said Miller, of Bakersfield, California, and Bae, of Lynnwood, Washington, flew back with James Clapper, the director of national intelligence. Clapper was the highest-ranking American to visit Pyongyang in more than a decade.
Their release was the latest twist in the fitful relationship between the Obama administration and the young North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, whose approach to the U.S. has shifted back and forth from defiance to occasional conciliation.
Bae was serving a 15-year sentence for alleged anti-government activities. He was detained in 2012 while leading a tour group to a North Korea economic zone.
Miller was serving a six-year jail term on charges of espionage after he allegedly ripped up his tourist visa at Pyongyang’s airport in April and demanded asylum. North Korea said Miller had wanted to experience prison life so he could secretly investigate the country’s human rights situation.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
Success. Please wait for the page to reload. If the page does not reload within 5 seconds, please refresh the page.
Enter your email and password to access comments.
Hi, to comment on stories you must . This profile is in addition to your subscription and website login.
Already have a commenting profile? .
Invalid username/password.
Please check your email to confirm and complete your registration.
Only subscribers are eligible to post comments. Please subscribe or login first for digital access. Here’s why.
Use the form below to reset your password. When you've submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.