The Sleep Time and Rise "n" Shine Thread For 6/6-7/09: North Korea Sentence Journalists to 12 Years

Photo from the Associated Press

Tough news to swallow, as these fellow journalists are enduring nothing but hell at this point:

North Korea on Monday sentenced two American journalists to 12 years of hard labor in a case widely seen as a test of how far the isolated Communist state was willing to take its confrontational stance toward the United States.

The Central Court, the highest court of North Korea, held the trial of the two Americans, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, from Thursday to Monday and convicted them of “committing hostilities against the Korean nation and illegal entry,” the North’s official news agency, KCNA, said in a report monitored in Seoul.

Horrible stuff indeed. More on their status in the article from Times reporter Choe Sang-Hun.

Until tomorrow, may it bring a better you, and a better me.