(LEAD) North Korea says will try detained U.S. journalists
SEOUL, April 24 (Yonhap) — North Korea said Friday that it will put to trial two U.S. female journalists detained in the country, announcing that its investigation into their alleged illegal entry and “hostile acts” has been concluded.
The American journalists — Euna Lee and Laura Ling from San Francisco-based Current TV, started by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore — were arrested by North Korea near its border with China on March 17.
Pyongyang said on March 31 that an investigation was under way and that it was preparing to indict them on charges of illegally entering the country and engaging in unspecified “hostile acts.” North Korea also said consular contact was allowed and that the American reporters were being treated “according to the relevant international laws.”
The U.S. State Department said last week diplomacy was under way to free the Americans. The Swedish embassy in the North have been handling affairs involving the American citizens in North Korea, with which Washington does not have diplomatic relations.
“We're working through a number of different diplomatic channels to try to see what we can do to get these folks released,” State Department spokesman Robert Wood said.
Tensions have sharply risen since North Korea's rocket launch on April 5, which the U.N. Security Council swiftly condemned as violating a U.N. resolution barring its ballistic activity.
North Korea insisted the launch is part of its peaceful program to develop space and, in protest of the U.N. action, withdrew from the six-party talks on ending its nuclear programs last week.
The Americans’ detention is the third since 1994, when North Korea held a U.S. pilot whose military chopper was shot down after straying into North Korea.
Two years later, another American citizen, Evan Hunziker, were held for three months on suspicion of spying after swimming in the Yalu River bordering North Korea and China. Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, then a U.S. congressman, flew to Pyongyang to successfully negotiate their release.
A South Korean worker remains in detention in North Korea for a fourth week on allegations of criticizing Pyongyang's political system and trying to incite a local female employee to defect.
I wonder if Obama going talk to North Korea to death
And then look what happened just five months later:
"Evan Carl Hunziker, a troubled self-described "missionary" who swam naked into North Korea and was held for three months on spy charges there before being released, was found dead here today in an apparent suicide. The body of Hunziker, 26, whose Thanksgiving release was negotiated by Rep. Bill Richardson (D-N.M.), President Clinton's choice to be ambassador to the United Nations, was found at dawn in the restaurant-bar area at the frayed downtown Olympus Hotel, where he had been staying, police spokesman Jim Mattheis said. No note was found, Mattheis said. The hotel is owned by Hunziker's relatives. Hunziker was arrested in late August in North Korea when he illegally entered the ..."
I hope they are not "Manchurian Candidating" those two girls up there right now as we speak. I am sure the Chia Pet is taking special interest in their case; might even have met them or at least seen them through one way glass somewhere.
When that idiot US Pfc. (or maybe a corporal) in the 1980s went over the line into North Korea at the DMZ, they used him a little bit for propaganda magazines and TV, and then poof, the guy vanishes and the Norkies just say to his folks in the USA, “so sorry, he died in a swimming accident in the Pottongang River, no body recovered”. And that was that.