PYONGYANG, North Korea -- North Korea's Supreme Court on Sunday convicted a 24-year-old American man of entering the country illegally to commit espionage and sentenced him to six years of hard labor.
At a trial that lasted about 90 minutes, the court said Matthew Miller of Bakersfield, Calif., tore up his tourist visa at Pyongyang's airport upon arrival April 10, according to the official Korean Central News Agency, and admitted to having the "wild ambition" of experiencing prison life so he could secretly investigate North Korea's human-rights situation.
Miller, who looked thin and pale at the trial and was dressed completely in black, is one of three Americans being detained in North Korea.
Showing no emotion throughout the proceedings, Miller waived the right to a lawyer and was handcuffed before being led from the courtroom after his sentencing. The court, comprising a chief judge flanked by two "people's assessors," ruled it would not hear any appeals to its decision.
Earlier, it had been believed that Miller had sought asylum when he entered North Korea. During the trial, however, the prosecution argued that was a ruse and that Miller also falsely claimed to have secret information about the U.S. military in South Korea on his iPad and iPod.
Miller was charged under Article 64 of the North Korean criminal code, which is for espionage and can carry a sentence of five to 10 years, though harsher punishments can be given for more serious cases.
The Associated Press and The Choson Sinbo, a pro-North Korean newspaper in Japan, were allowed to attend the trial.
The Choson Sinbo, quoting the North Korean court in its ruling on Miller, wrote, "His was an anti-state crime perpetrated under the protection and encouragement of the current U.S. government, which is intent on isolating and stifling our republic, and must be sternly punished."
The newspaper said Miller had developed a deep hostility against North Korea while reading anti-North Korean publications.
During the trial, the prosecution presented as evidence Miller's iPad and iPod, his U.S. passport, his torn-up North Korean tourist visa and his notebook.
While under interrogation, he tried to mislead investigators by saying, untruthfully, that his iPod and iPad contained important data on U.S. military bases in South Korea, The Choson Sinbo quoted the prosecution as saying.
International attention to the North's human-rights conditions has grown since a United Nations commission of inquiry issued a report in February documenting what it called "widespread, systematic and gross" violations, including enslavement, torture, rape and executions in the North's prison camps. The U.N. Human Rights Council adopted a resolution in March calling on the Security Council to take action.
A trial is expected soon for one of the other Americans being held, Jeffrey Fowle, who entered North Korea in April on a tourist visa. He had said in an earlier interview with CNN that he was taken into custody because he had tried to leave the country after having left behind a Bible. North Korea treats proselytizing by outsiders as an attempt to undermine its government.
The third American, Korean-American missionary Kenneth Bae, has been sentenced to 15 years of hard labor on charges of trying to build an underground proselytizing network in a plot to overthrow the North Korean government.
All three have appealed to the U.S. government to send a senior statesman to Pyongyang to intervene on their behalf.
During a brief interview in Pyongyang last week, Miller said he had written a letter to President Barack Obama but had not received a reply.
After Sunday's court verdict, the U.S. State Department urged North Korea to release Miller, as well as Bae and Fowle.
"Now that Mr. Miller has gone through a legal process, we urge the DPRK to grant him amnesty and immediate release," State Department spokesman Jen Psaki said in a statement, using an abbreviation for North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. "There is no greater priority for us than the welfare and safety of U.S. citizens."
Psaki said the State Department "strongly recommends" that U.S. citizens refrain from travel to North Korea.
Fowle, a 56-year-old equipment operator from Moraine, Ohio, said his wife, a hairstylist from Russia, made a written appeal on his behalf to Russian President Vladimir Putin. He said the Russian government responded that it was watching the situation.
The U.S. has offered repeatedly to send its envoy for North Korean human-rights issues, Robert King, to Pyongyang to seek the freedom of the detainees, but without success.
Former President Bill Clinton went in 2009 to free a couple of jailed journalists. Jimmy Carter made the trip in 2010 to secure the release of Aijalon Gomes, who had been sentenced to eight years of hard labor for illegally crossing into the country to do missionary work.
In 2011, the State Department's envoy for North Korean human rights managed to successfully intervene in the case of Korean-American businessman Eddie Yong Su Jun.
The United States has no diplomatic relations with North Korea and strongly warns American citizens against traveling to the country.
Uri Tours, a New Jersey-based travel agency specializing in North Korea tourism that handled the arrangements for Miller, said in an email Sunday that it was working to have Miller returned to his parents in the United States.
"Although we ask a series of tailored questions on our application form designed to get to know a traveler and his/her interests, it's not always possible for us to foresee how a tourist may behave during a DPRK tour," the travel agency said in a statement Friday. "Unfortunately, there was nothing specific in Mr. Miller's tour application that would have helped us anticipate this unfortunate outcome."
The agency said that as a result of the incident, it now routinely requests a secondary contact and reserves the right to contact those references to confirm facts about a potential tourist. It has also added advice warning tourists not to rip up any officially issued documents and "to refrain from any type of proselytizing."
Information for this article was contributed by Lara Jakes and staff members of The Associated Press; by Sam Kim, Rose Kim and David Lerman of Bloomberg News; and by Choe Sang-hun of The New York Times.
A Section on 09/15/2014