North Korea, facing U.N. sanctions for last month's nuclear test, on Monday raised the stakes in its growing confrontation with Washington by jailing two U.S. journalists to 12 years hard labor for "grave crime."
The sentence follows U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's warning on Sunday the United States was considering putting the reclusive North back on its list of states that sponsor terrorism, which would further isolate the impoverished country.
The journalists, Euna Lee and Laura Ling, of U.S. media outlet Current TV, were arrested in March working on a story near the border between North Korea and China. The trial for the two, working for the company co-founded by former Vice President Al Gore, opened on Thursday.
"The trial confirmed the grave crime they committed against the Korean nation and their illegal border crossing as they had already been indicted and sentenced each of them to 12 years of reform through labor," the official KCNA news agency said in a brief dispatch.
