For the past two months, Encinitas residents Pyong and Helen Park have been living in a daze. "We just couldn't believe it,"said Helen.
On Christmas Day, their son Robert, 28, a Christian missionary from Tuscon, Arizona illegally crossed into North Korea through China.
"It's been really hard, actually for the first two weeks, we cry all the time,"said Pyong.
Robert said he was going to deliver letters to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, demanding he step down and shut down the country's brutal prison camps.
"The concentration camps must be liberated,"said Robert in an interview before he left the U.S. "If they're not liberated, I don't want to come out."
But on Thursday, North Korea's news agency reported that Robert had apologized for his actions, so the government would be released for "taking his admission and sincere repentance of his wrong doings into consideration."
It's unclear if Robert really did apologize, but it doesn't matter to his parents. They just want him home. "He's really big in our hearts you know," said Pyong.
