CNSNews.com - State Department Mum on American Journalists Jailed in North Korea

CNSNews.com - State Department Mum on American Journalists Jailed in North Korea

(CNSNews.com) – Two American journalists remained jailed in North Korea and could face up to 10 years in labor camps for illegally entering the communist country and engaging in “hostile acts,” but the U.S. State Department has not made any public demands for their release.

When asked by CNSNews.com why the State Department has not made the demand as it did in the case of Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi who was convicted of spying for the U.S. but was released in Tehran on May 12, State Department press office staff said they believed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had spoken out about the women.

But the only reference on the State Department Web site to Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who were detained by border guards on March 17, is a statement issued by Clinton on May 1 marking World Press Freedom Day.

In May, Clinton urged graduates at Barnard College in New York to use the Internet to help free the women, who work for former Vice President Al Gore’s Current TV media project.

“We have two young women journalists right now in prison in North Korea, and you can get busy on the Internet and let the North Koreans know that we find that absolutely unacceptable,” Clinton said.

Tala Dowlatshahi, director of New York’s Reporters Without Borders, told CNSNews.com that she thought Clinton had called the arrests “shameless” but that the U.S. government hasn’t pressured the communist regime in the matter.

“We don’t feel that the State Department has done nearly enough,” Dowlatshahi said. “There hasn’t been enough pressure put on North Korea about holding it accountable for its actions against U.S. citizens.”

Jae Ku, director of the U.S. Korea Institute at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, said he believes the State Department is handling the journalists’ detention in the same way it has handled other similar cases.

“I can imagine that the State Department is telling the families to stay low and that they are working on it,” Ku told CNSNews.com. “That they shouldn’t rock the boat and that by putting it out in the media, that it will worsen the situation and their treatment.”

In fact, Ku said, it is the families who should be lobbying the State Department and media around the world to force North Korea to release the women.

“Only international focus and pressure will get these two journalists released,” Ku said. “The family really should have been on the front line.”

He added that one of the journalists’ sister, Lisa Ling – who was a co-host on ABC’s “The View” and earned renown for a documentary she helped produce that followed the plight of North Korean women who were trafficked over the border into China – is finally using her “star power” to bring attention to her sibling’s plight.

“I think now she’s getting the picture,” Ku said. “She needs to come out swinging.”

The North Korean government announced it would put the women on trial on Thursday, but no details were released about what happened, or even if it happened. The women are accused of crossing into North Korea illegally and engaging in "hostile acts."

Some have speculated the international condemnation of North Korea’s recent nuclear missile tests could mean the women are being used as “bargaining chips,” but Ku said the women’s detention reveals the brutality of Kim Jong-il’s regime.

“Whether they crossed the border into North Korea is immaterial,” Ku said. “They should have been released.

“Any normal state would have released them,” Ku said. “The fact that they were held hostage to play with the international media is unacceptable and reprehensible.”

A request by CNSNews.com to interview a State Department spokesman about the journalists was denied. Phone calls and e-mails to Current TV and Al Gore’s environmental venture, The Climate Project, seeking comment from Gore on the women’s fate were not answered.