News about the arrests of US journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee was broadcast at the Seoul Railway Station in South Korea.
(Ahn Young-Joon/Associated Press)
N. Korea says US journalists were engaged in smear campaign
News about the arrests of US journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee was broadcast at the Seoul Railway Station in South Korea.
(Ahn Young-Joon/Associated Press)
SEOUL - One video recorder set, six tapes, a digital camera, and a stone. North Korea laid out its evidence yesterday against two US journalists sentenced to hard labor for entering the country illegally.
The country’s official news agency reported that the journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, documented their journey into communist North Korea, even pocketing a stone to commemorate the illicit trip across the frozen Tumen River from China.
“We’ve just entered a North Korean courtyard without permission,’’ the Korean translation of their videotape narration said, according to Korean Central News Agency.
Ling, 32, and Lee, 36, who work for former vice president Al Gore’s California-based Current TV media group, were sentenced June 8 to 12 years of hard labor in a North Korean prison for illegal entry and “hostile acts.’’
Before yesterday’s report, little was known publicly about the journalists’ arrest March 17.
The timing of its release - hours before President Obama met with South Korea’s leader, Lee Myung-bak, and days after the UN Security Council issued new sanctions against North Korea for a May nuclear test - raised fears the women were being used as political pawns.
North Korea wants to remind the United States that the women remain in Pyongyang’s hands, said Kim Yong-hyun, a professor at Seoul’s Dongguk University.
“The North is sending a message ahead of the summit: ‘Don’t take your eyes off this. This is a negotiating card we have,’ ’’ Kim said.
KCNA said it released the report to “let the world know crimes committed by Americans at a time when an unprecedented confrontation with the United States have been created on the Korean peninsula.’’
“The accused admitted that what they did were criminal acts, prompted by the political motive to isolate and stifle the socialist system of the DPRK by faking up moving images aimed at falsifying its human rights performance and hurling slanders and calumnies at it,’’ the agency said. The DPRK stands for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
Brent Marcus, a spokesman for Current TV, said the company had no comment on the developments. A spokesman for Gore also declined to comment.
Analysts say normalizing ties with the United States, which has 28,500 troops in South Korea, is a key goal of North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Il, who is believed to be paving the way for his youngest son to be his successor.
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.
