Factbox: A look at some Americans held prisoner in North Korea

(Reuters) - A Korean-American missionary detained for two years in North Korea, where he served time at a labor camp, said on Wednesday two Americans held in the reclusive country should remain hopeful that U.S. officials will obtain their release.

The following is a look at some of 13 Americans held by North Korea since 1996. Most of them were sentenced to years of hard labor but held for less than a year.

* Evan Hunziker, then 26, was held for three months in North Korea on spying charges in 1996. After he was apprehended by North Korean farmers, Hunziker spent a month in a detention center near the border before being moved to a Pyongyang hotel. U.S. government officials suggested Pyongyang was using the young drifter as a pawn in a game of international diplomacy. Then-U.S. Representative Bill Richardson secured his release in November 1996. Hunziker committed suicide about a month later.

* Euna Lee and Laura Ling of U.S. media outlet Current TV were arrested in March 2009 along the North Korea-China border while reporting on human trafficking. They were accused by Pyongyang of illegally entering North Korea with "hostile" intent and sentenced to 12 years of hard labor. They were released in August 2009 after former U.S. President Bill Clinton went to Pyongyang to secure their return.

* Robert Park, a Christian human rights activist trying to raise global attention to the suffering of the North Korean people, crossed into the reclusive state in December 2009. Park told Reuters just before entering the North that he saw it as his duty as a Christian to make the journey and did not want the U.S. government to try to free him. He was arrested shortly after entering. In February 2010, he was released. The North's official KCNA news agency said Park confessed to entering the state illegally and had changed his mind about North Korea after being treated kindly there.

* Aijalon Mahli Gomes, then 30, of Boston had been working as an English teacher in South Korea and was arrested in January 2010 for illegally entering North Korea from China. He was sentenced to eight years of hard labor and freed after eight months when former U.S. President Jimmy Carter went to North Korea to retrieve him. Gomes' family described his captivity as "a long, dark and difficult period," and thanked Carter for his trip.

* Kenneth Bae, a Korean-American missionary, returned to the United States in November 2014 after being imprisoned in North Korea for two years. The North convicted him of trying to overthrow the state and sentenced him to 15 years' hard labor.

* Matthew Todd Miller was freed at the same time as Bae. Miller, whom North Korea accused of "a gross violation of legal order," had been in custody since April 2014 and was serving a six-year hard labor sentence. They were accompanied home by U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Miller, of Bakersfield, California had gone to North Korea on a tourist visa, which state media said he tore up while demanding Pyongyang grant him asylum.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas; Editing by Richard Chang)