North Korea jails U.S. journalists

By Jack Kim

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea raised the stakes in its confrontation with Washington on Monday by sentencing two American journalists to 12 years hard labour for "grave crimes" while U.S. President Barack Obama's spokesman said the two were innocent and should be freed.

Obama is due to meet with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak at the White House on June 16 to discuss a number of issues, expected to include including growing threats by North Korea which tested a nuclear bomb in May.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Sunday Washington was considering putting the reclusive North back on its list of states that sponsor terrorism, further isolating a country already facing additional United Nations sanctions.

The journalists, Euna Lee and Laura Ling, of U.S. media outlet Current TV, were arrested in March working on a story near the border between North Korea and China. The trial for the two, working for the company co-founded by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, had opened on Thursday.

"The trial confirmed the grave crime they committed against the Korean nation and their illegal border crossing as they had already been indicted and sentenced each of them to 12 years of reform through labour," the official KCNA news agency said.

In Washington, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the journalists' fate should not be linked to the dispute over Pyongyang's nuclear program.

The White House said in a statement Obama was "deeply concerned" and added: "We are engaged through all possible channels to secure their release."

The journalists' sentence seemed certain to deepen the chill in relations with the United States which has been trying for years to convince Stalinist North Korea to give up its ambition of becoming a nuclear weapons power.