American journalists set to face trial in North Korea

As global powers debate how to punish North Korea for its nuclear defiance, two American journalists seized nearly three months ago face a trial this week in Pyongyang on charges that could land them in one of the country’s notorious labour camps.

North Korean guards detained Laura Ling and Euna Lee, reporters for former vice president Al Gore’s Current TV media venture, at the northeastern border with China on March 17. Activists who helped organise their trip say they had been reporting on North Korean women and children who fled to China for an uncertain life as refugees.

Pyongyang accused the Americans of engaging in “hostile acts” and crossing into communist N Korea illegally, and announced two weeks ago the women will stand trial on June 4. Experts say conviction for “hostility” could mean five to 10 years in a labour camp.

Their detention and trial comes at a sensitive time in the diplomatic scramble to rein Pyongyang, which conducted an underground nuclear test last Monday. Analysts warned N Korea could use the trial to better its hand in the weeks before Obama and South Korea’s Lee Myung-bak hold a White House summit June 16.