Reporters Laura Ling and Euna Lee were arrested in March near the North's border with China. -- PHOTO: AP
SEOUL - NORTH Korea, facing United Nations sanctions for last month's nuclear test, raised the stakes in its growing confrontation with the United States yesterday by sentencing two American journalists to 12 years' hard labour for a 'grave crime'.
The sentence follows US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's warning on Sunday that the US was considering putting the reclusive North back on its list of states that sponsor terrorism.
Ms Euna Lee and Ms Laura Ling, reporters for former US vice-president Al Gore's California-based Current TV media venture, were arrested in March while working on a story near the border between North Korea and China. Their trial opened last Thursday.
'The trial confirmed the grave crime they committed against the Korean nation and their illegal border crossing as they had already been indicted and each sentenced to 12 years of reform through labour,' the official KCNA news agency said in a brief dispatch.
The harsh sentence - convicts are typically subject to hard work at farms, mines or construction sites - is certain to raise tensions between the North and the US further.
US President Barack Obama is 'deeply concerned' by the reported sentencing of the two journalists, the White House said.
'We are engaged through all possible channels to secure their release,' it said in a statement. The State Department urged North Korea to release the two journalists, both in their 30s. Analysts say the North is using the two women as pawns in its drive to open direct negotiations with the US.
'(North Korea) is using the sentence as bait to squeeze concessions out of the US amid heightened tension,' said Mr Lee Dong Bok, a senior associate with the CSIS think-tank in Seoul and an expert on the North's negotiating tactics.
'The harsh sentence has a dual purpose - showing that it was taking a 'hostile' act seriously and dramatising a pre-planned decision by Kim Jong Il to release them as an act of mercy,' said Professor Yang Moo Jin, of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.
'It could be over probably as early as this week.' -- WIRES
