Report: Bergen County Resident Captured In North Korea Said He Wanted To Be Arrested

In an interview with CNN that aired Tuesday morning, Tenafly resident Won-moon Joo said that wants to create “a great event” between North and South Korea which is why he entered North Korea illegally last week.

The interview was the first opportunity Joo has had since arrested April 22 to speak about his capture and detainment.

“I thought that by my entrance — illegally I acknowledge — that some great event could happen and, hopefully, that event could have a good effect between the North and South,” Joo said. “I wanted to be arrested.”

Joo said in the video that he wasn’t sure what kind of great event could happen due to his actions.

Joo is a South Korean citizen who is a permanent resident of the United States. Joo was most recently living in Tenafly and studying at New York University, but has lived in Wisconsin and Rhode Island as well. He moved to the United States in 2001. He took a semester from NYU off to travel across the United States and, CNN reported, went to North Korea after unsuccessfully trying to find work in California.

Joo said he crossed into North Korea near the Great Wall of China in Dandong near the border. He said he crossed two barbed wire fences and walked through farmland until he reached a large river. He said he followed the river until North Korean soldiers arrested him.

North Korean state-controlled media reported Joo’s arrest Saturday, more than one week after he was reportedly arrested, CNN reported.

Joo also told CNN he has had no access to a telephone or the Internet and hasn’t been able to talk to anybody from the United States or South Korea, but has been treated well.

“I’ve been fed well. I have slept well and I have been very healthy,” Joo said. “I would just like to apologize for creating a lot of worry among my loved ones.”

The North Korean government is known for its allegedly harsh treatment of its citizens and foreign residents it detains.

The country has one of the worst human rights records in the world. Hundreds of thousands of people are alleged to have starved to death or died from hunger-related illnesses when a famine swept through the country in the mid 1990s.

Citizens speak out, or who are suspected of speaking out, against the government and its Juche ideology are allegedly placed into work camps where they are never seen or heard from again.

North Korea, which calls itself the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, detained and charged two South Korean citizens with espionage in March. North Korea said the men admitted they were guilty of the charges brought against them, but North Korean soldiers were in the room when they admitted their alleged guilt.

Three Americans, including Kenneth Bae, a Korean-American missionary, were released from North Korea earlier this year. Two of whom entered the country on tourist visas.

(Pictured: A screenshot from a video of an interview CNN conducted with Won-moon Joo.)