Source: INcontext, August 10, 2017
North Korea freed a Canadian pastor serving a life sentence on humanitarian grounds, the official KCNA news agency said on Wednesday, just hours after the United States warned it would counter any threat from the North with “fire and fury.”
There was no clear connection between the release of [62-year-old] Hyeon Soo Lim and the heightened rhetoric between Washington and Pyongyang.
Lim, who served in one of the largest churches in Canada, had been sentenced to hard labor for life in December 2015 after North Korea accused him of attempting to overthrow the regime.
Lim’s Toronto-area church has said he visited the North more than 100 times since 1997 and helped set up an orphanage and nursing home. Last year, Lim told CNN he spent eight hours a day digging holes at a labor camp where he had not seen any other prisoners.
» Read full story and see a moving story about Lin’s experiences (CBC).