NKorea: 2 US journalists planned 'smear campaign'

SEOUL, South Korea - Two American journalists sentenced by North Korea last week to 12 years of hard labor were caught shooting video for what the North said was a politically motivated "smear campaign," state-run media said Tuesday.

The reporting team from Current TV crossed the frozen Tumen River dividing North Korea and China three months ago and walked up the river bank - all the while recording their transgression, the official Korean Central News Agency said.

"We've just entered a North Korean courtyard without permission," the Korean translation of their narration on the videotape said, according to KCNA. One of them picked up and pocketed a stone as a memento of the illegal move, the report said.

Two women - reporter Laura Ling and editor Euna Lee - were arrested in Kangan-ri in North Hamgyong Province, the report said. A third person, Current TV executive producer Mitch Koss, and their Korean-Chinese guide managed to flee, KCNA said.

Last Monday, Lee and Ling were sentenced in North Korea's top court to 12 years of hard labor for what KCNA called politically motivated crimes. They were accused of crossing into North Korea to capture video for a "smear campaign" focused on human rights, the report said.

"The accused admitted that what they did were criminal acts committed, prompted by the political motive

to isolate and stifle the socialist system of (North Korea) by faking up moving images aimed at falsifying its human rights performance and hurling slanders and calumnies at it," it said.

Current TV public relations director Brent Marcus said in an e-mail that the company had no comment.

The women were detained March 17 at a time of rising tensions between North Korea and the United States over the communist nation's nuclear and missile programs. Weeks earlier, North Korea had announced its intention to send a satellite into space aboard a long-range rocket - a launch Washington called a cover for a test of a long-range missile designed to strike the U.S.

North Korea went ahead with the rocket launch in early April, and in an increasingly brazen show of defiance, conducted a nuclear test on May 25 and fired off a series of short-range missiles in the days before the journalists' trial.

The women's families claim Lee, 36, and Ling, 32, were reporting on North Korean refugees in China and had no intention of crossing into North Korea. Many feared they would become political pawns in any negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang. The families have pleaded for leniency and urged their release on humanitarian grounds.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who earlier called the charges against the women "baseless," said Washington was working every channel to secure their release.

"We think the imprisonment, trial and sentencing of Laura and Euna should be viewed as a humanitarian matter," she said. "We hope that the North Koreans will grant clemency and deport them."

The alleged details of the case involving the two women working for the San Francisco-based media venture founded by former Vice President Al Gore were released by state media just hours before President Barack Obama sat down at the White House with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak.

The two leaders spoke at a joint press conference following their meeting and agreed that the new U.N. resolution seeking to halt the North's development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile must be fully enforced.

The South Korean president also called on Pyongyang to release the two journalists.

Kim Yong-hyun, a professor at Seoul's Dongguk University, said that North Korea was trying to remind the U.S. before Obama and Lee met that the women remain in its hands.

"I think the North is sending a message ahead of the summit: 'Don't take your eyes off this. This is a card we have,"' Kim said. "The North is pressing the U.S. to decide whether it's going to resolve the journalist issue through dialogue or not."

The KCNA report warned Washington that North Korea was watching its next moves closely.

"We are following with a high degree of vigilance the attitude of the U.S. which spawned the criminal act" against North Korea, the report said.

After being transferred to Pyongyang and being kept in separate quarters, the women went on trial June 4 on accusations of entering the country illegally and engaging in "hostile acts."

The KCNA report said Lee and Ling were allowed to choose their interpreters. Ling was represented by a defense lawyer of her choice, but Lee - referred to by her Korean name, Lee Seung-un - voluntarily gave up the right to legal defense, it said. The proceedings were closed to foreigners. They were sentenced to prison June 8.

"The criminals admitted and accepted the judgment," KCNA said.