North Korea could use U.S. journalists as political pawns

SEOUL, South Korea — Prisoners spend long days toiling in rice paddies and factories. Survivors say beatings are frequent, hunger is constant and clothing is scarce in the freezing winter.

But experts said that based on past experiences, the two American journalists sentenced to 12 years in a North Korean labor prison probably won’t see this side of the nation’s notoriously brutal gulag. The reporters — Laura Ling and Euna Lee — will likely be kept apart from North Korean inmates as negotiators try to cut a deal for their release.

"I don’t think the reporters will do hard labor. It’s simply not in the North Koreans’ interests to make them go through that,” said Roh Jeong-ho, director of the Center for Korean Legal Studies at Columbia Law School in New York.

Roh agreed with several other analysts who have said Pyongyang will likely use the women to maximize its leverage in talks with Washington. Discussions have already begun about who would represent the U.S. as an envoy, with New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and former Vice President Al Gore named as possibilities.

The reporters were arrested on the China-North Korea border three months ago while reporting on the trafficking of women for Gore’s Current TV. Their five-day trial ended Monday when they were sentenced 12 years of "reform through labor.”



by the associated press