North Korea confirmed on Wednesday that it detained a Korean American late last month.
 
The state-run Korean Central News Agency said that on April 22nd the North arrested Kim Sang-dok, who was invited to serve as a professor of accounting at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology.
 
The report claimed that Kim committed a hostile crime aimed at overthrowing the North’s government and was thus arrested in line with the North’s law. The report, however, stopped short of elaborating what the hostile crime was.
 
Kim is said to have been in and out of North Korea for nearly ten years and took part in humanitarian work, including helping flood victims and orphans.
 
With Kim’s detainment, a total of three Americans are now being detained in the North. American college student Otto Warmbier is incarcerated in the North on charges of hostile acts against the regime and Korean-American pastor Kim Dong-chul is imprisoned on espionage charges.
 
It appears that the North is once again seeking to use American hostages as a bargaining chip amid high tensions between Pyongyang and the Trump administration.
 
Back in 2009, the North abducted two American female reporters and used them as a means to negotiate with the U.S. The North has made it a habit to use hostages as bargaining chips every time it faces a crisis. 

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