US apology 'could win reporters' release' in North Korea
North Korea might release two convicted American journalists if the US offers a gesture such as an official apology, a US-based scholar who visited Pyongyang said in interviews released today.
Laura Ling and Euna Lee were detained in March near the North Korean border with China and sentenced last month to 12 years of hard labour for entering the country illegally and for “hostile acts”.
The two work for former US Vice President Al Gore’s California-based Current TV media group.
University of Georgia political scientist Han Park said that the two are being kept at a guest house in the North Korean capital and the delay in sending them to a prison labour camp may be an attempt to seek talks with Washington on their release.
“North Korea’s move not to carry out the sentence suggests that it could release them through a dialogue with the US and they could be set free at an early date, depending on the US gesture,” Mr Han said in a interview with South Korea’s JoongAng Ilbo newspaper.
Mr Han, originally from South Korea, arrived on Thursday in Seoul following a trip to Pyongyang.
Separately, he told South Korea’s Yonhap news agency that the issue of the journalists could be resolved if the US government offers an official apology and promises such things won’t happen again.
He also predicted that Washington and Pyongyang could hold a dialogue soon over the journalists’ release and their return to the US, according to Yonhap. No timeframe for a possible meeting was given.
“I heard from North Korean officials that the American journalists were doing fine at a guest house in Pyongyang,” he told the JoongAng Ilbo.
Mr Han said North Korean officials were angry at the journalists for trying to produce a programme critical of the isolated communist country.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said today that the reporters have expressed “great remorse for this incident”.
Mrs Clinton called on North Korea to grant the two amnesty and allow them to quickly return home to their families. She said: “Everyone is very sorry that it happened”.
Their continued detention comes as the US is moving to enforce UN sanctions as well as its own measures against the communist regime for its May 25 nuclear test. The North also recently fired seven ballistic missiles in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions.
