N. Korea: 2 U.S. reporters held, investigated

[jimmy olsen]

Man, I'd hate to be these poor bastards. 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29810305/

N. Korea: 2 U.S. reporters held, investigated

Pyongyang: Americans, who work for Current TV, crossed border 'illegally'

updated 5:20 a.m. ET, Sat., March. 21, 2009

SEOUL, South Korea - Two Americans were detained by North Korea for illegally crossing its border and were under investigation, the country's official news agency said Saturday.

The two female U.S. journalists were arrested March 17 while "while illegally intruding into the territory of (North Korea) by crossing the (North Korea)-China border," the Korean Central News Agency said.

Authorities were investigating the case, KCNA said. The brief dispatch gave no further details.
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South Korean media and a South Korean missionary identified the two Americans as Laura Ling and Euna Lee, reporters for former Vice President Al Gore's San Francisco-based media outlet Current TV.

State Department officials said Washington is in contact with North Korea about the two detained journalists.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton "is engaged on this matter right now," spokesman Robert A. Wood told reporters Friday. "There is a lot of diplomacy going on. There have been a number of contacts made." He did not elaborate.

The incident comes at a sensitive time on the Korean peninsula, with North Korea declaring its intention to fire a satellite-equipped rocket into space in early April — a launch some fear will be a cover for the test-fire of a long-range missile.

Regional standoff
The North also is locked in a standoff with regional powers over its nuclear program, and earlier this week ordered out five U.S. groups that distribute much-needed food aid in a country where the World Food Program says millions are going hungry.

The two reporters were in the border area with a male cameraman and their guide as part of a reporting assignment on North Korean refugees.

The journalists headed to the Chinese city of Yanji, across the border from North Korea's far northeastern corner, where they planned to interview women forced by human traffickers to strip for online customers, according to the Rev. Chun Ki-won of the Seoul-based Durihana Mission, a Christian group that helps defectors.

Chun said Ling and Lee contacted him three months ago asking for help organizing a trip to China.

They also planned to meet with children of defectors, Chun said. Many children who grow up on the run in China live in legal limbo, unable even to attend school, according to a 2008 Human Rights Watch report.

The North Korean-Chinese border is long, porous and not well demarcated.

A growing number of North Koreans have sneaked into China to avoid political repression, chronic food shortages and to seek asylum, mostly in South Korea, according to North Korean defectors in South Korea and activists.

© 2009 The Associated Press

[PDH]

I suppose, given all things, those poor bastards would hate to be you as well...

[The Brain]

OMG they're gonna feed them the dogs.

[DisturbedPervert]

Off to the bark plantations!

[Savonarola]

Yet another chapter in the long history of victory in the DPRK:

Tradition of Victories of DPRK
Pyongyang, March 20 (KCNA) -- The army and people of the DPRK are filled with the will to annihilate the enemy, determined to bring victory to Songun Korea through a resolute and relentless war of right for reunification, should the U.S. imperialists and the south Korean war maniacs invade an inch of the sky, land and sea of the DPRK.

It is the revolutionary temperament and proud tradition of the army and people of the DPRK to win victories all the time in the death-defying fight with the aggressors.

The anti-Japanese armed struggle was a war waged by the Korean People's Revolutionary Army against the Japanese imperialists' Kwantung Army one million strong without a rear of the state or support of a regular army.

The anti-Japanese revolutionary forerunners and people greeted the day of national liberation by routing the formidable Japanese imperialists who spread the myth of their "invincible Imperial Army", looking up to President Kim Il Sung as the sun of the nation and legendary hero.

The army and people of the DPRK shattered the myth of the "mightiness" of the U.S. imperialists and emerged as the victor in the Fatherland Liberation War by creating a lot of tactics and miracles beyond the usage and common sense of the war when the U.S. imperialists and their satellites invaded the young DPRK which was less than two years old.

The U.S imperialists brought dark clouds of war over Korea in the Pueblo incident and Panmunjom incident in the last century. But they fell on their knees each time in face of the indomitable spirit of the army and people of the DPRK.

The army and people of the DPRK defended their idea and system by shattering single-handedly the offensive of the imperialist allied forces to stifle the DPRK in the last decade of the 20th century when an anti-socialist storm swept the world with the east-west cold war compressed to DPRK-U.S. confrontation.

The DPRK has been further fortified as the impregnable socialist bulwark in the new century and won a brilliant victory in the acute standoff with the imperialists.

The spokesman of the General Staff of the Korean People's Army declared in a recent statement to the U.S imperialists and the south Korean puppet war maniacs who had launched into the aggressive Key Resolve and Foal Eagle joint military exercises, defying repeated warnings of the DPRK, that the revolutionary armed forces of the DPRK would respond with a prompt and merciless military action to a trifling hostile action of the enemy infringing on its sovereignty and violating its territory, territorial waters and air space.

Sadly the story about the journalists has not yet broken on the Korean Central News Agency site so all we know is the lies of the imperialist American scum.

[Neil]

Sending left-wing journalists?  That's just cruel, even for a state as loathsome as North Korea.

[Ed Anger]

The two female U.S. journalists were arrested

[KRonn]

Wow, NK allows outside reporters? Nah, must be a NK trick....