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U.S. veteran who was held in N. Korea tells his story

 
Merrill Newman, center, walks beside his wife, Lee, left, and his son Jeffrey at San Francisco International Airport on Dec. 7, 2013, after his release from North Korea..
Merrill Newman, center, walks beside his wife, Lee, left, and his son Jeffrey at San Francisco International Airport on Dec. 7, 2013, after his release from North Korea..
Published Dec. 12, 2014

BEIJING — In his 36th-floor hotel room overlooking Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, Merrill Newman developed a routine. He woke at 7:15, ate breakfast at 8 — eggs, toast and two cups of coffee — and then he waited.

A nurse and a doctor visited four times a day to take the temperature and blood pressure of the 85-year-old Californian. The interrogator, who sometimes shouted at him, called him a liar and told him to stop acting like a 3-year-old, came less frequently.

A year after he was released by North Korea, Newman, a Korean War veteran who ran afoul of the North Korean authorities on a trip there last year, has finally told the story of his detention in an e-book, The Last P.O.W. by Mike Chinoy, released this week.

A former U.S. Army intelligence officer who fought in the Korean War, Newman was detained by North Korea for more than a month and accused of war crimes.

The narrative, based on interviews by Chinoy, a journalist, portrays the event as the unfortunate result of a collision between a naive 85-year-old and a paranoid state, worried that an elderly, ailing war veteran might be part of some U.S. plot to reignite a 60-year-old conflict.

Newman acknowledges in the book that his war service and his desire to meet relatives of the anti-communist guerrillas he had helped train were his undoing.

Two tour guides who escorted Newman and an American friend on their sightseeing reported that desire to their superiors, he says in the book.

"It was clearly my error to indicate I'd like to make contact with any North Korean survivors" from the war, Chinoy quotes him saying.

The North Koreans detained him at the last moment, escorting him off the plane he had boarded for the flight home. They took him to the Yanggakdo Hotel, a 1,000-room tower on a small island in the center of the capital, where he was held in a guarded suite.

The interrogations began the next day, Chinoy writes.

The most explicit piece of evidence against Newman, in the interrogator's view, was an email Newman had sent to some of the veterans of the guerrilla brigade who now live in South Korea.

Newman had asked them if they knew of any colleagues who had stayed behind in North Korea, and whether he could find them. He had shown the email to his two guides.

The interrogator, a short, stocky man in his 40s, said the email proved Newman was a spy and accused him of using the tour as a cover, Chinoy writes.

Two weeks after his arrest, he was given a confession to read, a rambling statement with grammatical errors that recounted how he had been involved in killing civilians and destroying "strategic objects."

"You make a confession because you don't have any choice," Newman said in the account.

The confession was posted online and a week later Newman was awakened at 6 a.m. and told to get dressed and prepare for his release. His iPad, cellphone and camera were returned. At the airport, he was given a pair of dark glasses to wear to make him less conspicuous.

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"People really hate you here," an interpreter who accompanied him said. "You'd better wear these glasses for the whole trip."

Newman failed to understand that for the North Koreans the 1950-53 war against the United States had not finished, Chinoy writes. An armistice remains in place; a formal peace treaty has not been signed.

Further, Newman was not aware, he says, of the "visceral hatred" the government felt for the Kuwol regiment guerrillas he had helped train and equip, and who are considered traitors in North Korea.

"It seems really stupid now, even having opened that door," Newman says in the book. "But at the time it didn't seem so."

After his release, the North Korean news agency said Newman had been freed because of his confession, and his "advanced age and health condition."

Soon after he returned, the U.S. State Department called. North Korea had submitted a bill for $3,241 to the Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang for the cost of his hotel room, meals, a $23 phone call to his wife and $3 for a lost plate.

Newman asked if the payment would help free other Americans detained in North Korea. Informed that it would not, Newman said, he declined to pay.