 SEOUL -- Two American journalists who have been detained in North Korea for two months on charges of illegal entry and "hostile acts" will be put on trial June 4, the Communist North announced on Thursday.
| A good old fashioned show trial! |
The reporters, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, were arrested by the North Korean military on March 17 on the border between China and North Korea. They had been in China reporting on North Korean refugees for Current TV, a San Francisco-based media company founded by Al Gore, the former vice president.
| Thanks for all your help, Al, in getting your valued employees sprung ... |
| To be fair, what could Mr. Gore do about this? He's merely a semi-employed civilian these days, who can't even get life-saving legislation brought to the floor of the House of Representatives, or even enacted as EPA regulations. And North Korea is considerably deafer than House Democrats |
| Al could have at least spoken up about the matter. He might have had to waddle off the houseboat or even use up a carbon credit or two (he can always buy more) but he could have expressed his concern. That would have made the news and would have let average Americans know that two of their citizens are being held in the gulag. |
In announcing the trial date, the North's state-run news agency, KCNA, gave no further details, such as what charges they faced. But Pyongyang had earlier said that it found evidence of illegal entry and unspecified hostile acts.
| It's true: being dragged across the border by force avoids the usual entry procedures. |
Under North Korea's criminal code, a person convicted of hostile acts against the state can face at least five years in labor camps. Illegal entry carries a sentence of up to three years in a labor camp.
The trial comes amid heightened tension between North Korea and the United States.
| Snip all the hand-wringing about how the tension is our fault, how inappropriately upset we are at Nork missiles and nukes and weapons testing. Nope, it has to be our fault that these two journalists were kidnapped and are being held in violation of international law, it couldn't possibly be that the Norks are a bunch of paranoid, totalitarian thugs. |
| Don't be silly -- it's really Mr. Gore's fault. After all, he was once vice president of the United States, which is a tenuous enough connection to cast blame. |
News of the trial date came just days after Iran released an Iranian-American journalist sentenced to eight years in prison on charges of spying for the United States. The journalist, Roxana Saberi, was released Monday after an appeals court reduced her original sentence to a two-year suspended sentence.
| Thus implying that, oh ho ho, this is just a mix-up and the two journalists will be released after a show trial designed to embarrass us. Boys will be boys. The NYT will blame it on George Bush somehow. The reality is that these two journalists are being held in the very last place on earth you'd want to be a prisoner in. |
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