Two reporters for Current TV, the web broadcasting firm, are being held in North Korea:
Two female American journalists face five years or more in a labour camp, after North Korea announced today that they would be prosecuted for allegedly crossing the Stalinist state’s border with China.
Euna Lee and Laura Ling, of the web-based channel Current TV, were arrested in mid-March while reporting from the Tumen River, which marks North Korea’s north-east border. They were investigating the plight of North Korean refugees and appear either to have crossed the border or been abducted from the Chinese side by Chinese soldiers.
Either way, they have now become pawns in a much larger international diplomatic game which has seen the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, defy the world by testing a long range nuclear missile and building a small arsenal of nuclear weapons.
The chairman of the board of Current is Al Gore. The North Koreans are, historically, not above kidnapping, and that is possibly what happened to these two Americans. One wonders how the Obama administration will respond.