WASHINGTON — The three Americans released by North Korea have left a Washington-area hospital and have reunited with their families, the Pentagon said Sunday.
Major Carla M. Gleason, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said the men ‘‘were grateful, in good spirits and coping well.’’
North Korea released them last week while Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was in Pyongyang to help set up next month’s summit between President Trump and the North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.
The men received a hero’s welcome from Trump when they arrived back in the United States early Thursday and were then taken to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
Gleason said they now ‘‘have been reunited with their families. Their time together has been an incredibly joyous occasion. They ask for privacy as they transition home.’’
The three men, Kim Dong Chul, Kim Hak Song, and Tony Kim, were able to walk on their own from a van and onto Pomepeo’s plane after being freed.
Their release was the culmination of Pompeo’s 12-and-half-hour visit to the North Korean capital, which included a 90-minute meeting Kim.
The men were the latest in a series of Americans to be held in North Korea for alleged anti-state activities in recent years, only to be freed during the visit of a high-level US official or statesman.
Their releases draw a line under an issue that had weighed on plans for the historic summit between Kim and Trump that will focus on North Korea’s nuclear weapons.
The Trump administration had made clear the it regarded the arrests of the men as politically motivated, and had been critical of North Korea’s refusal to grant consular access to the three, other than a brief visit by a US envoy last June.
The envoy had repatriated American college student Otto Warmbier, who was sentenced to 15 years in prison with hard labor for stealing a propaganda poster. Warmbier died in June 2017, days after he arrived back in the United States with severe brain damage.
After that, pressure to win the releases of the other three men, whom the administration referred to as ‘‘hostages,’’ intensified.
Associated Press
