Two U.S. Reporters Held Captive Confirmed By North Koreans

Details of all of this are still a bit sketchy but North Korean officials are admitting that they are detaining two U.S. reporters - two women that the Koreans say they nabbed crossing their border from China. Here's the latest details from the report over at Breitbart:

North Korea confirmed Saturday that it was holding two American journalists and accused the women of "illegally intruding" on its territory.
The two were arrested March 17 after crossing the border with China, the Korean Central News Agency said. Authorities were investigating, KCNA said in a brief with no further details.
The arrests come at a sensitive time, with the North planning to fire a satellite-equipped rocket into space in early April—a launch some fear will be a cover for testing missile technology. North Korea said Saturday that it plans to close two air routes through its territory from April 4-8—the period it has set for the launch.

The North confirmed reports Saturday that it had arrested two American journalists "while illegally intruding into the territory" of North Korea, according to KCNA.
South Korean media and a South Korean missionary identified the two detained Americans as Laura Ling and Euna Lee, reporters for former Vice President Al Gore's San Francisco-based media outlet Current TV.

You know, I didn't even know that Al Gore had a media outlet! Anyway, here's how this all happened:

The two reporters were in the border area with a male cameraman and their guide as part of a reporting assignment on North Korean refugees.
The journalists were headed to the Chinese city of Yanji, across the border from North Korea's far northeastern corner, where they planned to interview women forced by human traffickers to strip for online customers, according to the Rev. Chun Ki-won of the Seoul-based Durihana Mission, a Christian group that helps defectors.
They also planned to meet with children of defectors, said Chun, who helped the journalists organize the trip. Many children who grow up on the run in China live in legal limbo, unable even to attend school, according to a 2008 Human Rights Watch report.
The journalists and cameraman Mitch Koss were following a guide across the frozen Tumen River early Tuesday morning when North Korean soldiers armed with rifles approached them from a half-hidden guard post, the South Korean Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported Saturday. It cited activists working with North Korean refugees in China and other unidentified sources.

It's tough to make a real call on what is going on but I would offer up that it seems to me that there are a lot of rogue regimes in this world right now that have to feel like a kid in a candy shop. The World's Policeman has gone away - the Sheriff of the United States is no longer on duty so all hell seems to be starting to break loose. You can almost feel it in the air, can't you?

North Korea confirms it detained 2 US reporters

A U.S. Embassy spokesman in Seoul said he had no further information. He asked not to be named, citing the sensitivity of the issue.
State Department officials said Washington is in contact with North Korea about the detentions.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton "is engaged on this matter right now," spokesman Robert A. Wood told reporters Friday. "There is a lot of diplomacy going on."
The U.S. has also informed the North that it is willing to hold a high-level meeting to push for a quick release of the reporters, South Korea's Munhwa Ilbo newspaper reported Saturday, citing an unnamed South Korean government source.
The two reporters were in the border area with a male cameraman and their guide as part of a reporting assignment on North Korean refugees.
The journalists were headed to the Chinese city of Yanji, across the border from North Korea's far northeastern corner, where they planned to interview women forced by human traffickers to strip for online customers, according to the Rev. Chun Ki-won of the Seoul-based Durihana Mission, a Christian group that helps defectors.
They also planned to meet with children of defectors, said Chun, who helped the journalists organize the trip. Many children who grow up on the run in China live in legal limbo, unable even to attend school, according to a 2008 Human Rights Watch report.
The journalists and cameraman Mitch Koss were following a guide across the frozen Tumen River early Tuesday morning when North Korean soldiers armed with rifles approached them from a half-hidden guard post, the South Korean Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported Saturday. It cited activists working with North Korean refugees in China and other unidentified sources.
Koss and the guide pushed the North Korean soldiers away and ran back toward China, but Ling and Lee were caught, the newspaper said, citing an unidentified source.
Koss and the guide were later seized by Chinese border guards and sent to the Chinese Public Security Bureau, the newspaper said. Their whereabouts remain unclear.
The North Korean-Chinese border is long, porous and not well demarcated and thus a common route for escape from the North.
A growing number of North Koreans have sneaked into China to avoid political repression, chronic food shortages and to seek asylum, mostly in South Korea, according to North Korean defectors in South Korea and activists.