Man Arrested As Spy In N. Korea Is A Missionary, His Parents Say

An American arrested in North Korea and accused of spying is a converted Christian who was probably “only trying to preach the Gospel,” his father says.

Evan Carl Hunziker, 26, had minor brushes with the law when he lived in Alaska, but found the Bible and became a changed man last year, said Edwin Hunziker of Parkland, a suburb of Tacoma.

“Spying, it’s the biggest joke I’ve heard lately. It’s stupid,” the elder Hunziker said in a telephone interview Tuesday. “He don’t know the first thing about spying unless somebody in South Korea educated him right quick in a month.”

He said his son went to Korea to preach Christianity. “That’s what he told me he was going to try to do.”

The man’s mother, a South Korean native living in Anchorage, Alaska, told The Seattle Times she is confused and frightened by the developments.

“My son is a Christian. He’s not a spy,” Jong Nye Hunziker told The Times. “He has a good heart. If somebody is hungry, he will give them food.”

Hunziker was being held in a North Korean jail. North Korea has notified the United States it is charging him with espionage, which could result in a death sentence.

Hunziker was arrested in August after crossing into North Korea from the Yalu River border with China. Hunziker was last visited Sept. 17 by Swedish diplomats, acting as intermediaries for the United States.

Evan Hunziker was born in Tacoma. Edwin Hunziker said he and Jong divorced in the early 1970s after about 15 years of marriage.

The elder Hunziker, a 65-year-old retired Army officer who served in the Korean and Vietnam wars, said his son went to Anchorage with his mother after the divorce and spent most of his life there.

He got into alcohol and drugs and trouble with the law, his father said.

” He had a temper, oh God, did he have a temper. But after they dried him out they kinda toned him down. He still flared up, he’d get mad. But he wouldn’t take his frustration out on punching something out. He’d go off in the corner and read his book. He read the Bible,” his father said.

Hunziker said he saw little of his son after the divorce and last spoke with him in late July or early August.

“The only thing he told me when he left here to go to South Korea was, he said, ‘I want to go over there and see if I can get me a job teaching people how to speak English.”

Jong Nye Hunziker told The Times her son married a South Korean woman and was divorced about three years ago. She said her son spoke Korean well and intended to become a missionary.

In South Korea, Hunziker stayed with a cousin, identified only as Yun, who told the Yonhap news agency that his American relative left with a tour group for China in mid-August, saying he wanted to do missionary work.

After he did not hear from him, the cousin contacted the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, only to learn that Hunziker had been arrested on a tiny island in the Yalu River.