Carter Home With American Released by NKorea

(Aug. 27) -- Former President Jimmy Carter arrived home in the United States with freed prisoner Aijalon Gomes this afternoon after securing a pardon from North Korea for the American teacher who had been jailed there since January.

Gomes' family members embraced the two after they stepped off Carter's plane in Boston.

They made no public statement while on the runway.

The ex-president landed in North Korea on Wednesday on a private mission to negotiate Gomes' release. The 31-year-old English teacher was sentenced to eight years' hard labor in April and fined more than $600,000 after he was accused of illegally crossing the border from China and committing a "hostile act."

North Korean news agency KCNA reported that the dictatorship decided to free Gomes after Carter "made an apology" to No. 2 official Kim Yong Nam and promised that such a case "will never happen again." The regime-run propaganda outfit boasted that the dictatorship's decision to "set free the illegal entrant is a manifestation of [North Korea's] humanitarianism and peace-loving policy."

Although Gomes was said to have attempted suicide in July -- because, KCNA claimed, of his "strong guilty conscience" -- the prisoner looked surprisingly healthy, if a little gaunt, and in good spirits in video footage taken as he boarded Carter's plane in Pyongyang.

In Washington, officials welcomed news of the teacher's release and praised the ex-president for embarking on the mercy mission. "[We] are relieved that he will soon be safely reunited with his family," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said. "We appreciate former President Carter's humanitarian effort and welcome North Korea's decision to grant Mr. Gomes special amnesty and allow him to return to the United States."

It is still unclear why Gomes -- who traveled to South Korea to teach English in his early 20s -- decided to cross the border. It's thought that he may have been inspired by Robert Park, a fellow evangelical Christian who walked into North Korea on Christmas Day singing hymns and clutching a letter calling on Chairman Kim Jong Il to resign. Park was immediately arrested and released in February after making a forced confession.

Pastor Simon Suh of Seoul's Every Nation Church of Korea, which Gomes regularly attended, told BBC radio that he had no idea the teacher was planning the trip. "He was a gentle and spiritual man," Suh said. He added that Gomes would have met North Korean refugees at the church and could have been motivated by their descriptions of religious repression in the North.

As well as securing Gomes' release, Carter also reportedly used the trip to discuss North Korea's nuclear program. Kim Yong Nam relayed Pyongyang's interest in restarting six-nation disarmament talks -- which have been on hold since the regime walked away from the table last year -- and said the government supported the "denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula," according to KCNA.

Some analysts have suggested that Carter's visit could help ease the growing friction between the regime and the U.S. Tensions have been on the rise following Pyongyang's decision to quit the nuclear talks and the sinking of a South Korean warship in March. An international team of investigators blamed the North for the attack, which killed 46 sailors, saying it had torpedoed the Cheonan as it sat in South Korean waters.

But if North Korea was genuinely committed to re-engaging with the U.S., it seems likely that Kim Jong Il would have talked with the ex-president in person. However, there's no evidence the authoritarian ruler met with Carter, and on Thursday, South Korean media reported that Kim was traveling to China -- the isolated regime's main sponsor and ally -- together with his son and heir apparent, Kim Jong Un. It is thought that the ailing dictator intends to introduce his potential successor to Chinese leaders on the trip.