Source: BBC
Two US journalists who were jailed last week in North Korea have admitted entering the country illegally, according to state news agency KCNA.
Laura Ling and Euna Lee "admitted and accepted" their sentences, KCNA said.
The two women were given jail terms of 12 years' hard labour, after being found guilty of crossing into North Korea from the Chinese border in March.
KCNA also said they had admitted getting footage for a "smear campaign" about North Korea's human rights.
The women's families have always claimed that Lee, 36, and Ling, 32, had no intention of crossing into North Korea.
They fear the two reporters may become political pawns in negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang, amid growing tensions over North Korea's nuclear programme and recent missile tests......more
Not much argument anymore now is there? Two people illegally going into a country where everything in censored in order to run a smear campaign? What was this TV station trying to prove putting two reporters lives in jeopardy for a story that no one really cares about. Did they think this was ground-breaking journalism that would win some award? Countless South Korea, Chinese and Japanese citizens have been kidnapped without a trace. Nothing their governments could do about it. Those families just suffer.
If you or I run into North Korea, would the Canadian government save our ass? Just because they're reporters doesn't make them anymore important and the US is going to compromise their entire North Korea stretegy to save them.
Enough with the cries that they were kidnapped. They were not. They were arrested under the law, however asinine that law is. They're as good as dead. I do feel for them and their families. They just happened to be working for a moron, such is life. It about time the media got a wake up call and figure out they have to be very careful and can't be sticking there nose where it's not wanted.
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3 comments:
I'm skeptical. KCNA is a pure-propaganda mouthpiece, and since nobody was allowed into the trial, there's no way to corroborate this story. also, "smear campaign"? Considering the official story is North Korea is basically full of dancing and loving and great human rights, a "smear campaign" could be anything that opposes this.
I have to admit, I'm with Hank on this one. A confession extracted in North Korea is absolutely worthless. In the unlikely event that one cannot be extracted by having the police stomp on you, it can be suitably fabricated at a later date anyway. There is zero difference between news and propaganda in North Korea.
It's also worth reminding the the Chinese side of the North Korean border is nothing like the South Korean side of the border, and the North Korean security services have made kidnapping foreigners into something of an art form. I would agree that getting too close to a poorly demarcated border where the risk of being apprehended by North Korea was reckless and stupid, but I think the question of whether they were on North Korean or Chinese soil when arrested is still a very open question.
The other question regarding this mess is, where the fuck is Al Gore while all this shit is going down?
Agreed, anything is a smear campaign.
These girls will confess anything now hoping to come home.
You go to a lawless country they can pin you down for anything. Forget Chinese or South Korean border. I wouldn't go anywhere 1000 miles of Pyongyang!
Al Gore? Nothing he can do, he'll just carry on carying on.
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