'God Bless America': Freed American prisoners thankful after being released from North Korea

Oren Dorell | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption President Trump welcomes home freed North Korea prisoners President Trump and first lady Melania were on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews as soon as the three Americans who were released from captivity in North Korea landed.

The release Wednesday of three Americans once held as prisoners by North Korea is the latest goodwill gesture by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un before he holds a historic summit with President Trump in the coming weeks.

The three men — Kim Dong-Chul, Kim Hak-Song and Tony Kim — walked on their own from a van and onto the waiting plane of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to begin their journey home to U.S. soil.

On their way back to the U.S., the men described their "deep appreciation" for Trump, Pompeo and the U.S. government for freeing them.

"We thank God, and all our families and friends who prayed for us and for our return," a statement from the men provided by the State Department reads. "God Bless America, the greatest nation in the world."

Pompeo met with the North Korean leader during his nearly 13-hour visit to Pyongyang to plan the meeting with Trump about denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula.

Pompeo called Trump as soon as the plane cleared North Korean airspace to tell him the men were in good health. Other officials then notified their families, according to the Associated Press.

The president tweeted the exciting news about "3 wonderful gentlemen that everyone is looking so forward to meeting." Trump also said he would welcome the Americans early Thursday when they land at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, just outside the nation's capital.

"They all walked up the stairs themselves, with their own power, so good enough to do that," Pompeo told reporters.

The three men, seized between 2015 and 2017, were sentenced to years in North Korea's brutal camps for anti-state offenses.

Tony Kim's family issued a statement on Twitter thanking Trump, God and everyone who helped secure his release.

"We ... want to thank the President for engaging directly with N. Korea. Mostly, we thank God for Tony’s safe return," they said. They also called for prayers for “the people of North Korea and for the release of all who are still being held."

The White House commended North Korea for the move, saying in a statement, "President Trump appreciates leader Kim Jong Un’s action to release these American citizens, and views this as a positive gesture of goodwill."

South Korean President Moon Jae-in also welcomed the action. “North Korea's decision will be very positive for the successful hosting of the North-American summit,” presidential spokesman Yoon Young-chan said.

Moon had asked Kim during their April 27 meeting to release six South Koreans detained in North Korea. “I hope that our detainees will be repatriated as soon as possible in order to further spread the reconciliation between the two Koreas and the spring of peace that has started on the Korean Peninsula,” Yoon said.

Who are the three Americans?

Kim Hak-Song was accused of "hostile acts" in May 2017. He had been doing agricultural development work at the research farm of Pyongyang University of Science and Technology and was living in Pyongyang.

He is an ethnic Korean born in China. He studied in California and became a U.S. citizen in the 2000s but never forgot his roots. "He was a very diligent, hardworking man determined to help people in North Korea," his friend David Kim told CNN.

Tony Kim was detained at the Pyongyang airport in April 2017 as he was set to depart the country. He subsequently was accused of "hostile acts."

He had spent a month teaching accounting at Pyongyang University of Science and Technology and most recently had been living in North Korea with his wife, still believed to be there. He supposedly had been volunteering at an orphanage. The university is funded largely by evangelical Christians from the United States and China.

Kim Dong-Chul of Fairfax, Va., a suburb of Washington, D.C., was arrested in October 2015 and sentenced to 10 years of hard labor in April 2016 on charges of spying and other offenses.

A month before his trial, he supposedly apologized for trying to steal military secrets for South Koreans. He had been living in Rason, North Korea, in a special economic zone where he ran a trading and hotel services company.

Plans for Trump-Kim meeting

Trump on Wednesday repeated that a time and place for his meeting with Kim has been set, but he did not give the details other than to say it won't be at the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea.

Pompeo, before he met with Kim, said the U.S. will not provide economic relief to North Korea, which is under some of the strictest international sanctions in the world, before it achieves Trump's goal of denuclearization.

"We’re not going to relieve sanctions until such time as we achieved our objectives," Pompeo said. "We are not going to do this in small increments, where the world is essentially coerced into relieving economic pressure. That won’t lead to the outcome that I know Kim Jong Un wants and I know President Trump is demanding."

Pompeo said he would describe the conditions "that will give them this opportunity to have a historic, big change in the security relationship between North Korea and the United States, which will achieve ... complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization."

While the president's goal for the nuclear program is clear, Trump's objectives on other concerns for the U.S. and allies South Korea and Japan have not been described in depth.

South Korea's Moon and North Korea's Kim issued a joint declaration after their April summit that the two countries would seek a formal end to the Korean War, which ended in 1953 without a peace treaty. In addition, the two countries would hold a family reunification event Aug. 15.

More: Meet the three American prisoners being held by North Korea

More: Trump-North Korea summit: Details get more complicated by the day

Contributing: Marco della Cava, Thomas Maresca and Christal Hayes