The three men released from a North Korean prison last week said upon their arrival back in the US, “God Bless America, the greatest nation in the world.”
The release Wednesday of three Americans once held as prisoners by North Korea is the latest goodwill gesture by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un before he holds a historic summit with President Trump in the coming weeks.
The three men — Kim Dong-Chul, Kim Hak-Song and Tony Kim — walked on their own from a van and onto the waiting plane of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to begin their journey home to U.S. soil.
All three are Christians who were doing missionary work alongside their regular occupations when they were arrested on a variety of alleged anti-state crimes.
Tony Kim was teaching accounting at Pyongyang University of Science and Technology. He reportedly had been volunteering at an orphanage. The university is funded largely by evangelical Christians from the United States and China.
Kim Hak-song had previously described himself as a Christian missionary who intended to start an experimental farm at PUST. It was founded in 2010 by a Korean-American Christian entrepreneur, with much of the costs funded by US and South Korea Christian charities.
Kim Dong Chul told Reuters at the time of his arrest in 2016 that he is a Christian pastor who had worked in China and the United States.