N. Korea: U.S. journalists plotted 'smear campaign'

SEOUL, South Korea -- One video recorder set, six tapes, a digital camera and a stone. North Korea laid out its evidence Tuesday against two American journalists sentenced to hard labor for entering the country illegally.

The country's official news agency reported that the journalists, Lisa Ling and Euna Lee, documented their journey into communist North Korea, even pocketing a stone to commemorate the illicit trip across the frozen Tumen River from China.

"We've just entered a North Korean courtyard without permission," the Korean translation of their videotape narration said, according to Korean Central News Agency.

Ling, 32, and Lee, 36, who work for former vice president Al Gore's California-based Current TV media group, were sentenced last Monday to 12 years of hard labor in a North Korean prison for illegal entry and "hostile acts."

Before Tuesday's report, little was known publicly about the journalists' arrest March 17.

The timing of its release -- just hours before President Obama met with South Korea's leader Lee Myung-bak and days after the U.N. Security Council issued new sanctions against North Korea for a May nuclear test -- raised the possibility the women were being used as political pawns.

North Korea wants to remind the U.S. that the women remain in Pyongyang's hands, said Kim Yong-hyun, a professor at Seoul's Dongguk University.

"The North is sending a message ahead of the summit: 'Don't take your eyes off this. This is a negotiating card we have,'" Kim said.

KCNA said it released the report to "let the world know crimes committed by Americans at a time when an unprecedented confrontation with the United States has been created on the Korean peninsula."

"The accused 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," the agency said.

The DPRK stands for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Brent Marcus, a spokesman for Current TV, said the company had no comment on the developments. A spokesman for Gore also declined to comment.

KCNA warned Washington that North Korea was watching its next moves closely.

"We are following with a high degree of vigilance the attitude of the U.S. which spawned the criminal act" against North Korea, the report said.

North Korea and the U.S. fought on opposite sides of the 1950-1953 Korean War. Decades later, the two Koreas technically remain at war. Washington and Pyongyang do not have diplomatic relations.

Analysts say normalizing ties with the U.S., which keeps 28,500 troops in South Korea, is a key goal of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, who is believed to be paving the way to tap his youngest son to be his successor.

Lee Jung-hoon of Yonsei University said North Korea's main objective is to ensure the survival of the regime, and gaining an assurance that the U.S. won't attack is crucial.

"North Korea's intention is to use these imprisoned American journalists as bargaining leverage in dealing with the United States," he said.

Ling and Lee fell into North Korean hands at a time of rising concerns about the country's nuclear and missile programs. Weeks earlier, North Korea had announced its intention to send a satellite into space -- a launch Washington called a cover for testing a long-range missile designed to strike the U.S.