Laura Ling and Euna Lee sentenced to 12 years of hard labor
North Korea convicted two American journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee and sentenced them Monday to 12 years of hard labor for crossing into its territory.
The two journalists were found guilty of committing a “grave crime” against North Korea and of illegally entering the country, North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency said.
North Korean guards arrested Ling and Lee near the China-North Korean border on March 17. The two were reporting about the trafficking of North Korean women at the time of their arrest, and it’s unclear if they strayed into the North or were grabbed by aggressive border guards who crossed into China. A cameraman and their local guide escaped.
The Obama administration said it would pursue “all possible channels” to win the release of Laura Ling and Euna Lee, reporters for former Vice President Al Gore’s San Francisco-based Current TV media venture.
Little is known about North Korea’s prison conditions. But Rev. Chun Ki-won, a South Korean missionary who helped arrange the journalists’ trip to China, said inmates in North Korean labor camps frequently face beatings and other inhumane treatment while being forced to engage in harsh labor such as logging and construction work.
Chun, however, predicted the North would send the journalists to a labor camp.
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