North Korea Sentences Two US Journalists to 12 Years in Labor Prison

North Korea on Monday sentenced two American journalists to 12 years of hard labor in a case widely seen as a test of how far the isolated Communist state was willing to take its confrontational stance toward the United States. The Central Court, the highest court of North Korea, held the trial of the two Americans, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, from Thursday to Monday and convicted them of “committing hostilities against the Korean nation and illegal entry,” the North’s official news agency, KCNA, said in a report monitored in Seoul. – from NYTimes

As NewTeeVee briefly points out, neither Current TV nor its founder Al Gore have so far publicly commented on the situation and the brutal sentence. Now the LA Times says a Japanese TV channel has reported that Gore would be prepared to fly to Pyongyang and secure the women’s freedom (this was depending on the outcome of the trial, but it could have hardly gone any worse than this). – from Techcrunch