A UC Riverside graduate is one of the three American detainees who President Donald Trump says left North Korea on Wednesday, May 9.

Tony Kim, who also goes by the Korean name Kim Sang-duk, was detained April 22, 2017, at the Pyongyang airport for committing “criminal acts of hostility aimed to overturn” North Korea, according to the North’s Korean Central News Agency. It didn’t say what specific criminal acts Kim was alleged to have committed.

Kim graduated from UCR in 1990 with a master’s degree in business administration, UCR spokesman John Warren confirmed Wednesday. He said the university has had no contact with Kim in recent years and no one currently working on campus remembers him as a student.

Television news vans gathered Wednesday outside Kim’s home in just outside the city limits in the Mockingbird Canyon area.

Neighbor Brad Aduddel, 49, said he’d only met Kim once, but had helped Kim’s wife with yard work while he was away.

“This hit all of us hard, but we’re ready to welcome him back,” Aduddel said, adding praise for Trump’s role in bringing back the hostages in good health. “They seem like good people.”

Kim’s son Sol Kim, a graduate student in California, is the only relative of the detainees to have appealed in public for their freedom. He could not be reached Wednesday. A car parked in front of the Riverside-area home has a license plate holder from California Baptist University in Riverside.

Kim taught accounting at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, which has been the only privately funded college in North Korea since its founding in 2010 with donations from Christian groups.

Pyongyang University said Kim’s detention had nothing to do with his work at the school.

Kim previously taught Korean at Yanbian University of Science and Technology in Yanji, China, not far from the North Korea border.

He made at least seven trips to North Korea to teach. His wife accompanied him on the visit when he was arrested. She was allowed to leave the country.

The family of Tony Kim thanked “all those” who worked for his return and also credited Trump for engaging directly with North Korea.

“Mostly we thank God for Tony’s safe return,” the family said in a statement, and they urged people to “continue to pray for the people of North Korea and for the release of all who are still being held.”

Trump tweeted Wednesday that U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo left North Korea with three American detainees who were released ahead of an upcoming meeting between the president and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The other detainees were Kim Dong Chul, a South Korean-born U.S. citizen who ran a company in the North’s northeastern Rason special economic zone before his arrest on Oct. 2, 2015, and Kim Hak Song, who worked in agricultural development at an experimental farm run by the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology until he was detained on May 6, 2017.

Staff writer Craig Shultz contributed to this report.