SEOUL, South Korea — Two American journalists detained at North Korea’s border with China are under investigation by North Korean military intelligence officers who suspect they were engaged in espionage activities, a report said today.
North Korea has said its border guards arrested two Americans on March 17 for “illegally intruding” after they entered the country from China.
The two have been identified as Laura Ling and Euna Lee, reporters for former Vice President Al Gore’s San Francisco-based media outlet Current TV.
South Korea’s mass-circulation JoongAng Ilbo newspaper said today that the American women had crossed the border from China while reporting on North Korean refugees.
They were taken to Pyongyang a day after their arrest and were being held at a guest house run by the military intelligence agency on the outskirts of the capital, the newspaper said, citing an unnamed South Korean intelligence officer.
North Korean investigators were checking the journalists’ cameras, video tapes and notebooks to ascertain whether they had been spying on the North’s military facilities, the report said.
North Korea “will not treat the female journalists harshly, although they will undergo intense interrogation,” the paper quoted another unnamed South Korean intelligence officer as saying.
South Korea’s main spy agency, the National Intelligence Service, said today that South Korean and U.S. intelligence authorities had been keeping a close watch on the case but that it could not immediately confirm the JoongAng Ilbo report.
