Merrill Newman

November 21, 2013 by staff

Merrill Newman, North Korean officials detained an 85-year-old American veteran of the Korean War last month as he sat in a plane set to leave the country, the man’s son said.

A uniformed North Korean officer boarded the plane on Oct. 26 and asked Merrill Newman, a tourist from Palo Alto, California, for his passport before telling a stewardess that Newman had to leave the plane, the son, Jeffrey Newman, said Wednesday.

“My dad got off, walked out with the stewardess, and that’s the last he was seen,” Jeffrey Newman told The Associated Press at his home in Pasadena, California.

It wasn’t clear what led to the detention. The son said he was speaking regularly with the U.S. State Department about his father, but U.S. officials wouldn’t confirm the detention to reporters, citing privacy issues. North Korea’s official state-run media have yet to comment on reports of the detention, which first appeared in the San Jose Mercury News and Japan’s Kyodo News service.

The son said that, according to his father’s traveling companion, Newman earlier had a “difficult” discussion with North Korean officials about his experiences during the 1950-53 war between U.S.-led United Nations forces and North Korea and ally China. That war ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty, leaving the Korean Peninsula still technically at war. The war is still an important part of North Korean propaganda, which regularly accuses Washington and Seoul of trying to bring down its political system – statements analysts believe are aimed in part at shoring up domestic support for young leader Kim Jong Un.