New Delhi, Feb. 26 -- Andrei Lankov, a prominent Russian scholar on North Korea who teaches at a Seoul university, said he was expelled from Latvia after being detained during a lecture in the country's capital.

In a text message Wednesday, Lankov said Latvian police did not provide a reason for his detention late Tuesday in Riga, where he was delivering a lecture on North Korea. He was later turned over to immigration authorities and taken to the border with Estonia, according to the professor and his school.

"They basically expelled me from the country, and it was all," Lankov said, without elaborating further.

Officials at South Korea's Kookmin University, where Lankov is a professor of history, said they confirmed he had been relea...