North Korea to release Australian missionary

North Korea says it will release and deport a 75-year-old Australian missionary detained since last month for allegedly distributing religious materials.

John Short was arrested after leaving “Bible tracts’’ in a Buddhist temple in the capital Pyongyang during a tour, the North’s state-run KCNA news agency said.

They are also holding US citizen Kenneth Bae, described by a North Korean court as a militant Christian evangelist.

He was arrested in November 2012 and sentenced to 15 years’ hard labour on charges of seeking to topple the government.