HONG KONG — North Korea said Saturday that a man it identified as a South Korean student at New York University had been arrested and charged with illegally entering the country.
The North’s official Korean Central News Agency said the student, Joo Won-moon, 21, from New Jersey, was detained on April 22 after crossing the Yalu River from Dandong, China. The river forms part of the North’s border with China.
Mr. Joo, who is said to hold permanent resident status in the United States, admitted violating North Korean law, said the news agency, which added that an investigation was continuing. The South Korean government said it could not immediately confirm the North Korean news report.
A student who identified himself as Won Moon Joo wrote on a web page for an introductory computer science course at N.Y.U. in the fall of 2013 that he was a sophomore finance major from Seoul, South Korea. It was unclear whether that student was the one detained in North Korea.
A spokesman for the university, John Beckman, wrote in an email response to an inquiry on Saturday that a student named Won Moon Joo was a junior at the Stern School of Business.
“He is not taking classes this semester, and the university was unaware of his travels,” Mr. Beckman said.
Mr. Beckman said the university had been in touch with the State Department and the South Korean Embassy.
In recent years, North Korea has detained several people who operated near the North Korea-China border or visited the North as aid workers or missionaries. North Korea charged them with working as spies.
In March, North Korea announced the arrests of two South Korean men on espionage charges, accusing them of collecting military and other secrets and infiltrating the country with political propaganda and subversive religious materials on behalf of the South Korean spy agency. Last year, it sentenced a South Korean Baptist missionary to life in a prison labor camp on espionage and other charges.
South Korea called the charges groundless and has called for the release of its citizens.
Kenneth Bae, a Korean-American missionary, and another American, Matthew Todd Miller, who were detained in North Korea on “anti-state” charges, were freed in November after the United States sent the director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr., to the North to seek their release.
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