The 44-year-old Kenneth Bae is at least the sixth American detained in North Korea since 2009. The others eventually were deported or released without serving out their terms, some after trips to Pyongyang by prominent Americans, including former presidents.

Analysts say Bae's sentencing could be an effort by Pyongyang to win diplomatic concessions in the ongoing standoff over its nuclear program.

State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said Thursday the U.S. was still seeking to learn the facts of the case. He said the Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang, which handles consular matters there for the U.S., did not attend Tuesday's trial.

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Bae, also known as Pae Jun Ho, is accused of attempting to "topple" North Korea, according to state-run media. He has supposedly admitted the charges.

"The Supreme Court sentenced him to 15 years of compulsory labour for this crime," North Korea's official news agency announced Thursday.

Bae, 44, was detained in the northeast city of Rason on Nov. 3 after entering North Korea on a tourist visa.

According to reports, he is a Korean-American who runs a travel company and was in the country to lead a tour group. A devout Christian, he had made several previous trips to North Korea to do humanitarian work, friends told the Associated Press.

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So this week, reporters and Korea watchers are pouring ink over what could happen to Bae and how he got himself in the knotty situation. Was he caught handing out Bibles in a country nervous about foreign Christian influences? Will he go to prison for life? Get the death penalty?

And the big-picture questions. Will Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter make a visit to secure his release? Will Bae be used as a bargaining chip in nuclear negotiations?

The problem is, in the strange absence of any specific statement from North Korean media, we really have no idea why Bae is being put on trial. On Saturday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) only said this:

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"Genuine dialog is possible only at the phase where the DPRK has acquired nuclear deterrent enough to defuse the US threat of nuclear war unless the US rolls back its hostile policy," the North's foreign ministry said in a statement carried by the state news agency, KCNA.

The statement came after a series of escalating threats against both the US and its neighbor, South Korea.

President Barack Obama said in an interview Tuesday that it is likely that North Korea will display more "provocative behavior" but that it would not be rewarded.

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Abbott was referring to reports that North Korea had included Austin, Texas on its list of potential targets in the United States. But, Abbott told the Waco Tribune-Herald, the state has more “far more dangerous” problems, in the form of the federal government.

“One thing that requires ongoing vigilance is the reality that the state of Texas is coming under a new 
assault, an assault far more dangerous than what the leader of North Korea threatened when he said he was going to add Austin, Texas, as one of the recipients of his nuclear weapons,” Abbott said. “The threat that we’re getting is the threat from the Obama administration and his political machine.”

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But how does the threat of military action play for foreign investors in South Korea?

Today, President Park Geun-hye met with foreign investors from Google, Citibank and Siemens — to name a few corporations — in her administration's Blue House, reported the JoongAng Ilbo newspaper. She tried to assure them that her administration would create a stable investment environment despite North Korea's bluster.

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Kicking off four days of talks in an East Asia beset by increasing North Korean threats, Kerry told reporters in Seoul that Pyongyang and its enigmatic young leader would only increase their isolation if they launched the missile that American officials believe has a range of some 2,500 miles — or enough to reach the U.S. territory of Guam.

"If Kim Jong Un decides to launch a missile, whether it's across the Sea of Japan or some other direction, he will be choosing willfully to ignore the entire international community," Kerry told reporters. "And it will be a provocation and unwanted act that will raise people's temperatures."

Kerry said the test would be a "huge mistake" for Kim.

"It will further isolate his country and further isolate his people who are desperate for food and not missile launches," he warned. "They are desperate for opportunity and not for a leader to flex his muscles."

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The Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland also said Thursday it has entered coordinates for targets. But it didn't elaborate on what it meant. The statement follows a recent torrent of warlike rhetoric seen as an effort to raise fears and pressure outside governments into policy changes.

The comments would carry more weight if they came from a military-related agency.

Analysts believe North Korea is extremely unlikely to stage an attack. But outside officials have said Pyongyang appears to be preparing to test-fly a missile that could reach Guam.

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Analysts see a direct attack on Seoul as extremely unlikely, and there are no overt signs that North Korea's 1.2 million-man army is readying for war, let alone a nuclear one. South Korea's military has reported missile movements on North Korea's east coast but nothing pointed toward South Korea.

Still, North Korea's earlier warning that it won't be able to guarantee the safety of foreign diplomats after April 10 has raised fears that it will conduct a missile or nuclear test on Wednesday, resulting in U.S. retaliation.

The United States and South Korea have raised their defense postures, and so has Japan, which deployed PAC-3 missile interceptors in key locations around Tokyo on Tuesday as a precaution against possible North Korean ballistic missile tests.

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Earlier April 8th, South Korean Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae said to a parliamentary committee that there were signs of nuclear test preparation at the Punggye-ri nuclear test site, according to Voice of America, although he wouldn't elaborate further.

"We found there had been no unusual movements that indicated it wanted to carry out a nuclear test," a Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok said later that day via Radio Free Europe, backtracking from the earlier comments.

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Appearing on CBS' "Face the Nation: Sunday, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., expressed concerns about the U.S. escalating tensions with North Korea into an unwanted war. "More than once wars have started by accident and this is a very serious situation,” said McCain. The senator commented that were a full blown conflict to take place, the U.S. is well-positioned to defeat North Korean attacks, but that the collateral damage in South Korea would be catastrophic. "South Korea would win, we would win, if there was an all-out conflict, but the fact is North Korea could set Seoul on fire and that would obviously be a catastrophe of enormous proportions," he said.

During an appearance on "Fox News Sunday," senior Obama adviser Dan Pfeiffer said that "the onus is on North Korea to take the step back."

Meanwhile Former Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman called Kim Jong Un "a crazy man." Hunstman did stress, however, that the heightened tensions with North Korea provided a rare opening for the U.S. to work with China toward a common goal: "This is a huge opening, believe me, with China, because our interests, for the first time in a long while, are aligned. We both want to get something done and bring the level of tension down on the Korean peninsula," he said.

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The official said Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel decided to put off the long-planned Minuteman 3 test until sometime next month because of concerns the launch could be misinterpreted and exacerbate the Korean crisis. Hagel made the decision Friday, the official said.

The test was not connected to the ongoing U.S.-South Korean military exercises that have been going on in that region and have stoked North Korean anger and fueled an escalation in threatening actions and rhetoric.

North Korea's military warned earlier this week that it was authorized to attack the U.S. using "smaller, lighter and diversified" nuclear weapons. And South Korean officials say North Korea has moved at least one missile with "considerable range" to its east coast - possibly the untested Musudan missile, believed to have a range of 1,800 miles. U.S. officials have said the missile move suggests a North Korean launch could be imminent and thus fuels worries in the region.

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It’s gone like this. A state of war has been declared between North Korea and the United States by Kim Jong-un, the North’s 27-year-old hereditary dictator. North Korea has battle plans to attack Washington and other U.S. cities, including, of all places, Austin, Texas, with atomic weapons. The Kaesong Industrial Zone, the last demonstration of North and South Korean cooperation just above the DMZ, has been temporarily shut down after the North refused entry to South Koreans who work there. Pyongyang has threatened to restart its Yongbyon nuclear power plant, mothballed since 2007 under a nuclear proliferation agreement with Washington and other regional powers, and begin producing bomb-ready plutonium again. And on Thursday, North Korea was allegedly moving missiles to its east coast facing Japan.

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Vice is a many tentacled media company — advertising agency, video channel, website, magazine — that has been heralded, most recently in this week’s New Yorker, for being able to make some cash in the Internet era by nailing its audience, hipster bros with a naughty vibe who like cool stories and alcohol. “Vice” is narrated by the company’s bearded CEO Shane Smith as it sends wan and tattooed reporters who look like the patrons of the new, local dive bar (graffiti in the bathrooms, specials on whiskey and Rolling Rock, but, you know, really first-rate bar food) to dangerous places.

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