North Korea Frees Chinese Fishing Boat After Ransom Report
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North Korea freed a Chinese fishing vessel and its crew after the boat’s owner posted updates on his microblog account saying that he’d been told to pay a 600,000-yuan ($97,800) ransom to win their release.
The ship and its crew, from the northern city of Dalian, were freed today, the official Xinhua News Agency reported, citing a Chinese consular officer in North Korea. The ship’s owner, Yu Xuejun, said on his Tencent Holdings Ltd. microblog account today that he couldn’t come up with the cash and was “thankful to the Foreign Ministry for its diplomacy.”