Hyeon Seo Lim, Canadian Pastor's Release From North Korea, Sought By Authorities

Canadian officials have gone to Pyongyang to discuss the release of a pastor who was sentenced to hard labor for life by North Korea in December 2015.

Daniel Jean, the national security adviser of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, is heading the delegation to seek the release of 62-year-old Canadian pastor Hyeon Soo Lim, state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported.

Lim served at one of the largest churches in Canada with the Light Korean Presbyterian Church of Mississauga, Ontario. He was sentenced by a North Korean court to life in prison after he was convicted of crimes against the state.

Lim was on a humanitarian mission in Rajin-guyok district when he was detained in February 2015, a family spokesperson said at the time, CNN reported.

Lim was charged with threatening the dignity of the supreme leadership by using religion, creating negative propaganda and communicating it to overseas Koreans. Lim was also charged with allying with Americans and South Korean authorities to lure and abduct North Korean citizens, reports said.

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This is the second time Canadian officials have visited Pyongyang in about nine months to discuss the release of the pastor. The last visit was sometime in late 2016.

Lim's ailing health has become a cause of concern among his family and friends. He has complained of stomach pain and high blood pressure in letters to his family and members of his church, a report said.

Moreover, Lim's family started demanding his immediate release ever since the death of an American university student, Otto Warmbier, in June, CNN reported.

Warmbier was detained early 2016 in North Korea and was charged and convicted of trying to steal a propaganda poster from his hotel. He was released in June but died due to a brain injury he sustained in custody in North Korea.

Canadian officials are worried about Lim. "His health and wellbeing remain of utmost importance to the government and we are obviously continuing to engage on his case and, given that it is an active case, we cannot provide any further comment at this time," Global News Canada reported Trudeau’s press secretary Cameron Ahmad as saying.

At the time of Lim's detention in 2015, North Korean prosecutors had called for his death penalty, the New York Times reported citing the North's KCNA.

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According to his church, Lim had visited North Korea more than 100 times on humanitarian missions. Lim lost contact with his congregation after entering North Korea in January 2015. In July 2015, Lim appeared in a government-arranged news conference in Pyongyang and confessed to plotting to overthrow the regime, according to the Times.

Lim has a wife and a son who live in the Toronto area. He started the Light Korean Presbyterian Church nearly about 30 years ago, after emigrating from South Korea. Under him, the congregation grew from about a dozen people in 1986 to more than 3,000 members, reports said.