by Dolapo Adelana

North Korea has arrested and detained a US citizen as he tried to depart from the country, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported Sunday.

According to Yonhap, the detention of the American simply identified only by his surname Kim brings to three the number of Americans detained by North Korea.

North Korea is yet to issue an official confirmation of the reported arrest, which would come at a tense time in relations between Pyongyang and Washington.

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Yonhap quoted sources who said Kim was arrested last Friday at Pyongyang International Airport on his way out of the country.

According to the news agency, Kim, aged in his late 50s and a former professor at China’s Yanbian University of Science and Technology, had been involved in aid programmes for the North.

Yonhap said Kim was reported in Pyongyang for about a month to discuss relief activities. The reason for his arrest was unclear.

South Korea’s National Intelligence Service and the unification and foreign ministries said they could not confirm the report.

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However, the director of a Seoul-based group called the World North Korea Research Center said his sources in Pyongyang had confirmed the arrest.

“The reason North Korea is not saying anything yet is because it is not done with the investigations,” Ahn Chan-il, a former defector, told AFP.

“It is important for them to hold a US citizen hostage at this point to prevent Washington from carrying out a decapitation of Kim Jong-Un,” Ahn said.

“It’s also a resolve to point a double-action revolver against the US and China because he is a US citizen who worked in China.”

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Two other US citizens — college student Otto Warmbier and Korean-American pastor Kim Dong-Chul — are currently being held in the North after being sentenced to long prison terms.

Kim was issued a 10-year sentence last year with hard labour for spying, while Warmbier was jailed for 15 years last year for stealing a propaganda sign and for “crimes against the state”.