North Korea: Smear Campaign

The latest news concerning the two American journalists who were arrested and sentenced to 12 years of hard labor in North Korea from CNN reports that North Korea officials have obtained confessions from the two women that they in fact were working on a smear campaign

They confessed? Really?

It's amazing to think that these women were going to ruin North Korea's good name. That somehow they were going to put a negative spin onto whatever information they could get and alter the way the world views the Kim regime?

That makes them extraordinarily powerful. And if that is so, don't they deserve more than 12 years of hard labor?

Think about it: once they have served their terms they can come home and write books about their experiences and make millions AND still smear the country's good name.

This makes no sense at all to me. I, like many others, believe North Korea officials are desperate. They want to provoke action on any level much like an eight pound dog barks and nips at the legs of a larger dog.

Do they really want a response?

Here, in part, is the CNN article. Would love to know what you think!

(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.

Supporters rally for U.S. journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling on June 4 in Seoul, South Korea.

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."
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