Calls for Release of American Journalists in North Korea

Demonstrations across the U.S. are to call for the release of two American journalists who face trial on spying charges in North Korea. Euna Lee, a Korean-American, and Laura Ling, a Chinese-American, were seized by North Korean soldiers in March while working on a story about North Korean refugees along the Chinese border.

A regular event dubbed North Korea Freedom Week in Washington, D.C. will also call for their release. Participants will seek to draw international attention the reporters' detention in a rally near the Capitol Building on Tuesday and at a press conference Wednesday by the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea.

International journalists' group Reporters Sans Frontieres (Reporters Without Borders) will deliver a petition to North Korea's permanent mission to the UN this week.

North Korea to put two U.S. journalists on trial

North Korea will put two detained American journalists on trial, the official North Korean news agency KCNA said on Friday.

The KCNA said the investigation about the two journalists was completed and North Korea decided to put them on trial. But the report didn't say what the two Americans were charged with, though they indicated that the two American journalists were "illegally intruding into the territory of the DPRK by crossing the DPRK-China border” and committing unspecified "hostile acts".

Espionage or "hostility toward North Koreans" are possible crimes that could be considered "hostile acts" and could mean five to 10 years in prison, South Korean legal expert Moon Dae-hong says.

Andrei Lankov, a North Korea expert at Kookmin University in Seoul, called the Americans another "negotiating chip" for Pyongyang as it embarks on negotiations with Washington and its allies over the nuclear impasse.

Putting them on trial "means that they want to increase their pressure on the U.S., much in line with their recent tactics," he said Friday.