A South Korean foreign affairs official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the ministry was "told by the U.S. State Department and the National Security Council that the report was groundless", though which part of the story was wrong wasn't specifically mentioned.
The country's official Korean Central News Agency said Kim Hak Song was detained Saturday, May 6, 2017, and that "a relevant institution is now conducting detailed investigation into his crimes".
The latest attempt happened just one day after North Korea announced that it has detained another USA citizen on charges of acting against its sovereignty, making him the fourth American national to be detained by Pyongyang over the past weeks.
USA officials say they expect the sanctions will also make it harder for North Korea to do business with global financial institutions.
Four US citizens are now being held in North Korea, a country with which the US has no diplomatic relations and has technically remained at war with since the 1950-53 Korean conflict.
The wife of a USA citizen who was detained in North Korea over the weekend is appealing for his immediate release.
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Then adjust during negotiations, settling where you wanted to be in the first place, but the other party thinks you've given in. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross said he sees the report as a threat. "It's been frustratingly slow", he fumed on Fox News.
In related news, several Japanese media sources reported on Monday that President Trump may be open to the possibility of inviting North Korean leader Kim Jong-un for direct talks in the United States. An unspecified number of suspects have been arrested in the case.
North Korea has urged the United States to withdraw its armed forces in South Korea and sign a permanent peace treaty to replace the armistice that stopped, but technically never ended, the 1950-1953 Korean War. North Korea accused Tony Kim of being rebellious to the government.
"On May 3, some [expletive] by the name of Cory Gardner, who sits on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, perpetrated wicked blasphemy against our supreme dignity during an interview with NBC", UPI's translation of the KCNA statement read.
While the leadership under President Xi Jinping is increasingly irked by a series of North Korea's banned weapons tests in defiance of global warnings, Beijing has said countless times that it is against the use of military force and called for dialogue to ease tensions on the peninsula.
"I was speechless, I was in shock", she said.
Just a day after his detention was revealed, little is known about Kim Hak Song. Last year, Otto Warmbier, a University of Virginia student, was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in prison after he confessed to trying to steal a propaganda banner.
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