SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea said on Monday it had found two U.S. journalists guilty of entering the state illegally and sentenced both to 12 years of hard labor.
“The trial confirmed the grave crime they committed against the Korean nation and their illegal border crossing as they had already been indicted and sentenced each of them to 12 years of reform through labor,” the official KCNA news agency said in a brief dispatch.
- North Korea Jails US Journalists for 12 Years, Reuters
- North Korea Has Sentenced Two US Journalists to 12 Years’ Hard Labour, BBC
- N. Korea Sentences 2 US Journalists to 12 Years Hard Labor, The New York Times
- Associated Press
- Korea Times
- JoongAhn Ilbo
- Digital Chosun Ilbo
- Korean Broadcasting System (KBS)
- Yomiuri Shimbun (Japanese)
- Current TV News Page
- DPRK’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) Website / Twitter Page
Two Former Captives Recall NKorea Imprisonment
June 7, 2009
TOKYO.—As the world awaited a North Korean Central Court decision in the June 4 trial of two American journalists in Pyongyang, North Korea, a former Japanese journalist has recounted his experience while he was imprisoned in the country for about two years.
Takashi Sugishima
“When I was first arrested, I thought my life had ended. I was wondering how I would be killed, by public execution, by poisoning?” Takashi Sugishima told CNN in a recent interview.
International press freedom group Reporters Without Borders says the two American journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, are the first foreign journalists since Sugishima to be held for any length of time in North Korea.
