US sending envoy to North Korea for ailing citizen

A senior U.S. envoy will travel to North Korea this week to seek the release of an American sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in the authoritarian country, the State Department said Tuesday.

The White House urged North Korea on Tuesday to grant clemency to Kenneth Bae, a 45-year-old American in custody there, and allow him to return to the United States.

"We urge the government of North Korea to grant special clemency to Mr. Bae immediately and allow him to return home with Ambassador King," the White House said in a statement.

The visit by Bob King, the U.S. special envoy for North Korean human-rights issues, will be the first public trip to North Korea by an administration official in more than two years and could make way for an improvement in relations severely strained by Pyongyang's pursuit of nuclear weapons.

State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said King will request a pardon and amnesty for Bae on humanitarian grounds. Bae, a tour operator and Christian missionary, was arrested in November and accused of committing "hostile acts" against North Korea. He suffers from multiple health problems and was recently hospitalized.

Washington has been calling for Pyongyang to grant amnesty since Bae was sentenced on April 30.

King will fly to Pyongyang on Friday from Tokyo on a U.S. military plane and will fly out on Saturday.

"Ambassador King will request [North Korea to] pardon Mr. Bae and grant him special amnesty on humanitarian grounds so that he can be reunited with his family and seek medical treatment," the department said in a statement. 

When King last visited North Korea in May 2011, to assess the impoverished North's food situation, he returned with Eddie Jun, the last American before Bae to be held then freed by Pyongyang. Jun, a Korean-American from California, was arrested for alleged unauthorized missionary work during several business trips to the country. He was released on humanitarian grounds.

Bae's sister Terri Chung in Edmonds, Wash., revealed earlier this month that he was moved from a labor camp to a hospital after losing more than 50 pounds. She says her brother suffers from diabetes, an enlarged heart, liver problems and back pain.

According to U.S. officials, Washington first made its offer to send King to North Korea several weeks ago, but Pyongyang only recently agreed. North Korea has not announced whether it will release Bae.

North Korea and the United States do not have formal diplomatic relations, and their tenuous ties have been strained since Pyongyang launched long-range rockets more than a year ago and conducted a nuclear test in February in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions. When sanctions were subsequently tightened, North Korea issued dire threats against the U.S. and its allies.

North Korea has dialed down its rhetoric in recent months and has moved to improve its relations with rival South Korea, a staunch U.S. ally. The two Koreas have agreed to reopen a shuttered joint industrial park and hold reunions of families divided since the 1950-53 Korean War.

North Korea, analysts say, has used detained Americans as bargaining chips in its standoff with the U.S. over its nuclear and missile programs. Multinational aid-for-disarmament talks have been on hold since 2009, and efforts by Washington to negotiate a freeze in the North's nuclear program in exchange for food aid collapsed 18 months ago.

Two senior Obama administration officials reportedly made secret visits to North Korea in 2012 in an effort to improve relations with the government of young leader Kim Jong Un but apparently made little headway.

Bae is at least the sixth American detained in North Korea since 2009. The others were eventually allowed to leave without serving out their terms, some after prominent Americans, including former Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, visited the country.

In an interview posted online by a pro-North Korean newspaper this month, Bae requested that a high-ranking U.S. official go to North Korea and seek a pardon for his release. It wasn't clear from the video whether he was speaking voluntarily.

Al Jazeera and wire services