Euna & Laura are FREE!

U.S. journalists head home from North Korea

updated 24 minutes ago

(CNN) -- Two U.S. journalists who had been detained by North Korea were traveling back to the United States with former President Clinton, Clinton's spokesman said.

North Korean President Kim Jong Il earlier had pardoned and ordered the release of Laura Ling and Euna Lee, state-run news agency KCNA said Wednesday.

The two women "are en route to Los Angeles, [California]where Laura and Euna will be reunited with their families," Clinton spokesman Matt McKenna said.

The announcement came after Clinton met with top North Korean officials in Pyongyang to appeal for the release of journalists, who had been arrested in March while reporting from the border between North Korea and China.

"Clinton expressed words of sincere apology to Kim Jong Il for the hostile acts committed by the two American journalists against the DPRK after illegally intruding into it," the news agency reported. "Clinton courteously conveyed to Kim Jong Il an earnest request of the U.S. government to leniently pardon them and send them back home from a humanitarian point of view.

"The meetings had candid and in-depth discussions on the pending issues between the DPRK and the U.S. in a sincere atmosphere and reached a consensus of views on seeking a negotiated settlement of them."

The report said Clinton then conveyed a message from President Obama "expressing profound thanks for this and reflecting views on ways of improving the relations between the two countries."

But White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters in Washington before the announced agreement that Clinton was not carrying any message -- written or oral -- from Obama.

Gibbs added that the former president last spoke with Obama during a White House visit in March. He described Clinton's trip as a "solely private mission to secure the release of two Americans."

"The DPRK visit of Clinton and his party will contribute to deepening the understanding between the DPRK and the U.S. and building the bilateral confidence."

Ling and Lee are reporters for California-based Current TV -- a media venture launched by Clinton's former vice president, Al Gore.

A statement from their families was posted Tuesday on the Web site lauraandeuna.com:

The families of the reporters thanked Gore and Clinton and said they felt "overjoyed" upon hearing of the upcoming release of Ling and Lee.

"We are counting the seconds to hold Laura and Euna in our arms," they said.

In Los Angeles, family friend Wally Yang said the Ling family had "done everything they could, while respecting the North Korean government, to try and get Laura home."

He predicted that Ling would remain a journalist. "Despite this terrifying experience, I can't imagine that Laura would give up her passion to tell stories that otherwise wouldn't be heard."

The two reporters were sentenced in June to 12 years in prison on charges of entering the country illegally to conduct a smear campaign. Because the United States has no diplomatic relations with North Korea, efforts to resolve the issue had been handled through Sweden, which represents U.S. interests in North Korea.

The visit by the former president, whose wife, Hillary Clinton, is the Obama administration's secretary of state, came about three weeks after the United States dropped a request that Ling and Lee be released on humanitarian grounds. Instead, the United States was seeking amnesty for the women, Hillary Clinton said. Watch what may lie behind the pick of Bill Clinton »


A plea for amnesty implies forgiveness for some offense, which could have given North Korea the chance to release the women without feeling that its legal system had been slighted, according to analyst Mike Chinoy, an Edgerton senior fellow on Asia at the Pacific Council on International Policy in Los Angeles, California.

Before the release, Chinoy said, "I suspect that it was made pretty clear in advance that Bill Clinton would be able to return with these two women, otherwise it would be a terrible loss of face for him."

Clinton's mission came as the United States and its allies in the region are seeking to push North Korea back into stalled nuclear disarmament talks. North Korea conducted a nuclear bomb test, its second, in May, and has conducted several missile tests since then. The United Nations responded to those tests by tightening and expanding sanctions on the nation.

North Korea and the United States were on opposite sides in the 1950-1953 Korean War and had no regular contacts before a 1994 crisis over North Korea's nuclear program. North Korea agreed at that time to halt the development of nuclear weapons, but abandoned that accord and withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 2003.

Clinton had considered visiting North Korea in 2000, near the end of his second term as president. His secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, went to Pyongyang in early 2000 to meet with Kim.

The 67-year-old North Korean leader was widely reported to have suffered a stroke a year ago and is believed to be grooming his youngest son, Kim Jon Un, as his successor.