North Koreans allowed to return home after 16-month detention by ISIS in Libya
The doctor and his wife were heading back to the Stalinist state when they were abducted
A DOCTOR who left the tyrannical terror state of North Korea was then captured by murderous ISIS fanatics in Libya.
Ri Yong, 58 , and his 56-year-old wife So Young Ju were taken by jihadists in Al-Noufleya, eastern Sirte in May last year.
The pair were part of a team sent by dictator Kim Jong Un to providing medical and humanitarian services in hospitals throughout Libya - despite hellish conditions for ordinary oppressed civilians in the Stalinist nation.
In a video posted on social media, the medic said they had been held by the terror thugs for 16 month in a tiny room.
"I was detained for a year and four months in Sirte. The doors were locked… there was no sun, and no light," he said, as reported by the Libya Observer.
It is not known how the couple were freed.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Muammar Gaddafi established close ties with North Korea and bought weapons from Pyongyang.
Last week the North Korean Embassy in Tripoli said in a statement to the Libyan News Agency LANA that all the North Korean doctors and nurses will leave the country if the kidnapped doctor and his wife were not released soon.
Dr Ri was chief of the North Korean medical staff in Jalu, a desert town in northeastern Libya.
His contract with the hospital had ended and he was on his way to Tripoli tofly back to North Korea when he and his wife were kidnapped.
Medical authorities in Jalu said three other North Korean doctors demanded to leave Libya and one has already left.
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