Laura Ling and Euna Lee are still in the custody of the North Korean government. Previously the only admission from the women was that they were filming a news story about human trafficking along the border between North and South Korea. The U.S Government, and Barack Obama specifically, have been relatively silent on this matter. It’s not hard to understand why, but the two innocent women caught up in the post-Cold War-Cold War may be suffering a fate they don’t deserve.

The two journalists, Laura Ling, 36, and Euna Lee, 32, both reporters for San Francisco-based Current TV, were sentenced in June to 12 years of hard labor after a trial in which they were accused of entering the country illegally and committing “hostile acts.”

The North Korean army stands at more than a million strong, and by that fact alone our ability to gain their compliance on this issue is weak. According to news reports though the women are not being forced into hard labor as their punishment dictated, but instead a “guest house in Pyongyang”.

A scholar who visited the North said in an interview published Friday in a South Korean daily that the two women were not in a prison camp, but rather in a guest house in Pyongyang, a development that seemed to suggest that the North still wanted talks with Washington on the women’s release.

What still does not look good is the reality that unless the U.S placates the North Koreans in some way these Laura and Euna will still be the trump cards in the post-Cold War-Cold War.

But Mr. Green said the North was unlikely to release the women without getting something in return. Although North Korea does not expect the Obama administration to abandon its effort to impose sanctions on the North for its recent nuclear test, he said, it is likely to want a “high-profile visit” by an administration official to demonstrate that “it’s possible to return to business as usual.”

Clinton Seeks ‘Amnesty’ for 2 Held by North Korea – NYTimes.com

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