http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iQ6DygHlXpbRxwK6aZ-e6f39QXwg

By Simon Martin, AFP

http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/asia/North-Korea-Arrests-US-Missionary-8023...

North Korea says it has arrested an American who illegally crossed the border from China last week.

Officials made the announcement in the state-run Korean Central News Agency Tuesday without giving any details.

The report apparently refers to U.S. Christian missionary and human rights activist Robert Park. A colleague, Jo Sung-rae, says Park entered North Korea on Christmas Day.

Jo said Park was carrying a Bible and a written human rights appeal for North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

The U.S. State Department said Monday that it had no independent confirmation that Park was in North Korea, but is concerned about his fate.

A spokesman said Sweden, which represents U.S. interests in North Korea, has offered to try to obtain more information.

Two U.S. journalists who illegally crossed into North Korea in March were sentenced to 12 years at hard labor. They were freed in August after former U.S. President Bill Clinton intervened.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5BS02E20091229

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea said on Tuesday it had detained a U.S. citizen who entered its territory, apparently confirming a report that an American activist crossed into the state to raise awareness about Pyongyang's human rights abuses.

http://www.mercurynews.com/nation-world/ci_14079895

Family hails NKorea statement on detained American
By ELLIOT SPAGAT Associated Press Writer
Posted: 12/28/2009 12:06:15 AM PST
Updated: 12/28/2009 07:25:25 PM PST

SAN DIEGO—A relative of an American missionary welcomes North Korea's announcement that it detained an American man who entered the communist nation illegally from China last week.

Manchul Cho says in an interview Monday that he had worried North Korea might execute his 28-year-old nephew Robert Park without ever recognizing his presence in the country.

The Los Angeles psychiatrist hopes his nephew is deported. That would allow him achieve the attention he sought without being harmed. He says a long incarceration would only galvanize the regime's critics.

It is believed that Park walked across the frozen Tumen River on Christmas Day carrying a Bible and written appeals calling for an end to repression and leader Kim Jong Il's rule.

Update from CNN...

December 29, 2009 12:47 a.m. EST

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/12/29/north.korean.american.held/index.htm...

North Korea announced Tuesday that it is holding an American who illegally entered the country on Christmas Eve, possibly a Korean-American missionary who told relatives he was trying to sneak into the isolated communist state.

The state-run Korea Central News Agency said the man was taken into custody after entering North Korea from China on December 24 and was "now under investigation by a relevant organ."

It provided no details, but the description appears to match the case of 28-year-old Robert Park, an Arizona man reported to have entered the country illegally to bring a message of "Christ's love and forgiveness" to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

"He loves you and wants to save you and all of North Korea today," reads the letter, a copy of which was posted on a South Korean Web site last week. "Please open your borders so that we may bring food, provisions, medicine, necessities, and assistance to those who are struggling to survive. Please close down all concentration camps and release all political prisoners today, and allow care teams to enter to minister healing to those who have been tortured and traumatized."

Park's parents told CNN affiliate KFMB that their son was willing to risk his life to deliver that message.

"He said, 'I'm not afraid to die as long as the whole world, every nation, pays attention to the North Korea situation,' " said his father, Pyong Park.