North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has pardoned two U.S. media women, who were sentenced to twelve years of corrective labor for illegally crossing the North Korean state border, and has ordered to set them free, the official Korean Central News Agency /KCNA/ said Tuesday.
The decision on releasing the two journalists was made public soon after a meeting that Kim Jong Il had in Pyongyang with U.S. former President Bill Clinton.
Laura Ling, a 32 year-old American of Chinese descent, and Euna Lee, a 36-year-old ethnic Korean, both of them working for the American cable channel Current TV, were detained by North Korean border guards March 17.
In early June, they were sentenced to twelve years of corrective labor for illegally crossing the North Korean state border and making a video recording for the purposes of a slander campaign spearheaded against the country.
