Scholar: NKorea interested in freeing US reporters

North Korea wants the U.S. to show remorse for the actions of two American journalists convicted of illegally entering the country, and it might free the women if Washington does so, a scholar who visited Pyongyang said Saturday.

The comments by North Korean officials to University of Georgia political scientist Han S. Park came as analysts say the isolated communist regime intends to use the detention of Laura Ling and Euna Lee as bargaining chips in its ongoing standoff with Washington over the country's nuclear and missile threats.

The journalists were detained in March near the North Korean border with China and sentenced last month to 12 years of hard labor for entering the country illegally and for "hostile acts." The two - who work for former U.S. Vice President Al Gore's California-based Current TV media group - were in the area to interview North Korean refugees.

Park said Saturday that North Korean officials told him during his recent five-day visit that the U.S. should offer "a remorseful acknowledgment" over the journalists' reporting, which they believe constituted "hostile acts" against their country because it would have cast the North in a negative light.

To help secure the women's release, Park said the U.S. "should acknowledge" that, though he cautioned that such an expression alone might not guarantee their freedom.

Park, a frequent visitor to North Korea for academic purposes, arrived in Seoul on Thursday. He said he visited Pyongyang in a private capacity and was not representing the U.S. government.

He also said that he learned during the trip that the women are being kept in a Pyongyang guesthouse rather than being sent to a labor camp as their sentences stated.

The scholar said he heard the information from what he called "responsible government officials" in Pyongyang.

"I also think the fact that the sentence has not been carried out suggests that North Koreans are seriously interested in releasing them if the situation warrants, that is, their desired conditions are met," Park said. He did not elaborate on what those conditions might be.

Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea expert at Seoul's Dongguk University, said the North's confining the journalists in a guesthouse showed its intention to "use them as a negotiating card."

The journalists' continued detention comes as the U.S. is moving to enforce U.N. sanctions as well as its own measures to punish the communist regime for its May 25 nuclear test. The North also recently fired seven ballistic missiles in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions.

Paik Hak-soon, an expert on North Korea at the Sejong Institute think tank in South Korea, said North Korea will use the journalists as a way to hold direct talks with the U.S.

"There is no other way," Paik said. "The U.S. should accept what North Korea wants" to secure the release of the journalists.

The plight of the journalists is complicated by Washington and Pyongyang not having diplomatic relations. North Korea and the U.S. fought on opposite sides of the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended in a truce, not a peace treaty.

In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday that the reporters have expressed "great remorse for this incident." She called on North Korea to grant the two amnesty and allow them to quickly return home to their families. Clinton said "everyone is very sorry that it happened."

The request for amnesty is a shift from previous U.S. calls for the women to be released on humanitarian grounds. It followed comments from Ling's family that she had acknowledged breaking North Korean law during a recent phone call.

Park said Saturday that North Korean officials have made sure the reporters "are treated with a great deal of humanitarian concern" such as ensuring the delivery of medication sent from their families and allowing them to make phone calls to the U.S..

The scholar's comments came days after Laura Ling told her sister, journalist Lisa Ling, during a 20-minute telephone call that she and Lee had broken the law in North Korea when they were captured in March and that a government pardon is their only hope for freedom.

A South Korean who helped organize the journalists' reporting trip to China, the Rev. Chun Ki-won, said in April that Ling and Lee traveled to the border region with North Korea to interview women and children who had fled the impoverished country.

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Associated Press writer Kwang-tae Kim contributed to this report.