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Scholar: NKorea wants US show of remorse
Published in Saudi Press Agency on 11 - 07 - 2009


North Korea wants the U.S. to
show remorse for the actions of two American journalists
convicted of illegally entering the country, and it might
free the women if Washington does so, a scholar who visited
Pyongyang said Saturday, AP reported.
The comments by North Korean officials to University of
Georgia political scientist Han S. Park came as analysts
say the isolated communist regime intends to use the
detention of Laura Ling and Euna Lee as bargaining chips in
its ongoing standoff with Washington over the country's
nuclear and missile threats.
The journalists were detained in March near the North
Korean border with China and sentenced last month to 12
years of hard labor for entering the country illegally and
for «hostile acts.» The two _ who work for former U.S.
Vice President Al Gore's California-based Current TV media
group _ were in the area to interview North Korean
refugees.
Park said Saturday that North Korean officials told him
during his recent five-day visit that the U.S. should offer
«a remorseful acknowledgment» over the journalists'
reporting, which they believe constituted «hostile acts»
against their country because it would have cast the North
in a negative light.
To help secure the women's release, Park said the U.S.
«should acknowledge» that, though he cautioned that such
an expression alone might not guarantee their freedom.
Park, a frequent visitor to North Korea for academic
purposes, arrived in Seoul on Thursday. He said he visited
Pyongyang in a private capacity and was not representing
the U.S. government.
He also said that he learned during the trip that the
women are being kept in a Pyongyang guesthouse rather than
being sent to a labor camp as their sentences stated.
The scholar said he heard the information from what he
called «responsible government officials» in Pyongyang.
«I also think the fact that the sentence has not been
carried out suggests that North Koreans are seriously
interested in releasing them if the situation warrants,
that is, their desired conditions are met,» Park said. He
did not elaborate on what those conditions might be.
Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea expert at Seoul's Dongguk
University, said the North's confining the journalists in a
guesthouse showed its intention to «use them as a
negotiating card.»
The journalists' continued detention comes as the U.S. is
moving to enforce U.N. sanctions as well as its own
measures to punish the communist regime for its May 25
nuclear test. The North also recently fired seven ballistic
missiles in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions.
Paik Hak-soon, an expert on North Korea at the Sejong
Institute think tank in South Korea, said North Korea will
use the journalists as a way to hold direct talks with the
U.S.
«There is no other way,» Paik said. «The U.S. should
accept what North Korea wants» to secure the release of
the journalists.
The plight of the journalists is complicated by Washington
and Pyongyang not having diplomatic relations. North Korea
and the U.S. fought on opposite sides of the 1950-53 Korean
War, which ended in a truce, not a peace treaty.
In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham
Clinton said Friday that the reporters have expressed
«great remorse for this incident.» She called on North
Korea to grant the two amnesty and allow them to quickly
return home to their families. Clinton said «everyone is
very sorry that it happened.»
The request for amnesty is a shift from previous U.S.
calls for the women to be released on humanitarian grounds.
It followed comments from Ling's family that she had
acknowledged breaking North Korean law during a recent
phone call.
Park said Saturday that North Korean officials have made
sure the reporters «are treated with a great deal of
humanitarian concern» such as ensuring the delivery of
medication sent from their families and allowing them to
make phone calls to the U.S..
The scholar's comments came days after Laura Ling told her
sister, journalist Lisa Ling, during a 20-minute telephone
call that she and Lee had broken the law in North Korea
when they were captured in March and that a government
pardon is their only hope for freedom.
A South Korean who helped organize the journalists'
reporting trip to China, the Rev. Chun Ki-won, said in
April that Ling and Lee traveled to the border region with
North Korea to interview women and children who had fled
the impoverished country.


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