Laura Ling and Euna Lee Accused of Smear by North Korea

These women have had enough rotten treatment that you would think it couldn't get worse, now the North Koreans have accused them of launching a smear campaign:

(CNN) -- North Korea's state media released a "detailed report" Tuesday claiming that American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee entered the country illegally in order to record material for a "smear campaign" against the reclusive communist state.

It added that the two women "admitted that what they did were criminal acts ... prompted by the political motive to isolate and stifle the socialist system of the DPRK by faking up moving images aimed at falsifying its human rights performance and hurling slanders and calumnies at it."

Ling and Lee were sentenced this month to 12 years of hard labor in North Korea.They were arrested in March for "having illegally trespassed into the border of the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea, as North Korea is officially known] and committed hostile acts against it for which they were tried."

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak urged North Korea to release the two journalists Tuesday in a joint appearance with U.S. President Barack Obama at the White House. Obama did not mention them. Relations between North and South Korea are extremely tense.

We can discount any confession that came out of North Korea and by all accounts they were simply doing a documentary on North Korea, although any reporting on the place surely would portray a nation of tyranny and rot. That is not called smear, that is honesty in reporting. In other good news we can be in range of North Korean missiles in 3 years:

Reporting from Washington -- North Korea may be able to overcome technical difficulties and assemble a missile capable of hitting West Coast cities within three years, a top Defense Department official said Tuesday, but it is unlikely to be able to deliver a nuclear warhead in that time frame.


The U.S. assessment came as North Korea's rulers show signs of preparing for additional weapons tests in the face of international condemnation and new United Nations sanctions.

The estimate of three to five years was provided in congressional testimony by Marine Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who previously oversaw America's nuclear forces as head of Strategic Command. It follows North Korea's most recent tests, including a nuclear detonation last month and a multistage missile launch in April that indicated progress but also highlighted flaws in the country's technology.