Australian student feared detained in North Korea

SYDNEY: Australia said it was "urgently seeking clarification" on Thursday on the fate of a 29-year-old tour guide and student feared detained in North Korea.

Alek Sigley -- who speaks fluent Korean and is one of only a handful of Western students living in Pyongyang -- is believed to have been detained sometime in the last three days. In a statement, Sigley’s family said there was no confirmation yet that he had been arrested.

"The situation is that Alek has not been in digital contact with friends and family since Tuesday morning Australian time, which is unusual for him," the statement said. Sigley, from Perth in Western Australia, had been studying Korean literature at Kim Il Sung University since 2018, while running a company specialising in tours of North Korea.

He married a Japanese woman in a ceremony in Pyongyang last year. Sigley has written various blog posts and articles about everyday life in Pyongyang -- focusing on everything from the city’s dining scene to North Korean app reviews and steering well clear of sensitive political issues.

His friend Crispin Rovere described him as "the nicest guy on Earth" and said that he was "only ever interested in sharing North Korea’s culture with the world and improving people-to-people connections."

Canberra said it was "urgently seeking clarification" on a man "who has been reported as being detained in North Korea". News of Sigley’s disappearance came just hours before Prime Minister Scott Morrison was to meet US President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan.

Trump -- who will go on to South Korea amid rumours of renewed talks with the North -- had been intimately involved in the case of Otto Warmbier, a University of Virginia student who was imprisoned during a tour of the authoritarian state after being accused of taking down a propaganda poster.

Doctors said he suffered severe brain damage while in detention, fell into a coma and died days after arriving back in the United States in June 2017. He was 22. Australia has no diplomatic mission of its own in Pyongyang and is represented in North Korea by the Swedish embassy.