SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea ordered the release of two jailed American journalists on Tuesday after former U.S. President Bill Clinton held talks with Kim Jong-il and the reclusive and ailing leader issued what North Korea’s KCNA news agency said was a “special pardon” for the pair.
The talks in Pyongyang were the highest-level contact between the United States and North Korea since Clinton was in office nearly a decade ago.
KCNA said Clinton left North Korea shortly after news of the imminent release of the two journalists, Euna Lee, 36, and Laura Ling, 32, who work for Current TV, an American TV outlet co-founded by Clinton’s vice president, Al Gore. The agency did not mention the journalists.
The pair were arrested on the North Korea-China border in March while reporting on the trafficking of women and accused of illegal entry.
A North Korean court sentenced them last month to 12 years of hard labor for what it called grave crimes.
“The families of Laura Ling and Euna Lee are overjoyed by the news of their pardon,” said a statement posted on a website created to support the two journalists.
The statement expressed gratitude to President Barack Obama and several high officials of his administration as well as thanking Clinton “for taking on such an arduous mission.”
But there were immediate questions about what Clinton had discussed with Kim beyond the fate of the two reporters during a visit that gave Kim what he craved — direct U.S. attention and a visit from a highly placed emissary.
The North Korean news agency insisted Clinton had “courteously conveyed a verbal message of U.S. President Barack Obama expressing profound thanks for this and reflecting views on ways of improving the relations between the two countries.”
The White House denied Clinton carried any sort of message from Obama.
David Axelrod, a senior adviser to Obama, told MSNBC television that Clinton was on a “private humanitarian mission” and that “I don’t think it’s related to other issues.”
Clinton, husband of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was the highest-level American to visit the reclusive communist state since his secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, went there in 2000.
He was received warmly and had what KCNA described as an “exhaustive conversation” over dinner with Kim and his top aides.
The North Koreans immediately sought to put their stamp on the visit.
“Clinton expressed words of sincere apology to Kim Jong Il for the hostile acts committed by the two American journalists against the DPRK after illegally intruding into it. Clinton courteously conveyed to Kim Jong Il an earnest request of the U.S. government to leniently pardon them and send them back home from a humanitarian point of view,” KCNA said.
It said the visit would “contribute to deepening the understanding between the DPRK (North Korea), and the U.S. and building the bilateral confidence.”
By Jack Kim
Source: Reuters
