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US reporter jailed in NKorea calls sister
2009-07-09
WASHINGTON (AFP) - One of the two US reporters jailed in North Korea made a telephone call to her US-based sister, Lisa Ling said in an interview broadcast on Thursday. "It was a tremendous relief to hear Laura's voice last night," Lisa Ling told CNN affiliate KOVR in California. "It was only the first time I have heard her voice in weeks," she said, adding the call was made late Tuesday. "That silence has been just so terrifying and deafening." Border guards detained American TV reporters Laura Ling and Euna Lee on March 17 along the frontier with China while they were researching a story about refugees fleeing North Korea. A court on June 8 sentenced Ling, 32, and Lee, 36, to 12 years of "reform through labor" for an illegal border crossing and an unspecified "grave crime." Laura Ling "was very specific about the message she was communicating and she said, 'look, we violated North Korean law and we need our government to help us. We're sorry about everything that happened but now we need diplomacy," Lisa Ling told KOVR. Without actually seeing her sister "and without people actually seeing her physically, it's very difficult to tell" how she is doing in prison, Lisa Ling said. The jailed US reporters worked for San Francisco, California-based Current TV, a venture supported by former US vice president Al Gore. US officials led by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have appealed to Pyongyang for clemency on humanitarian grounds and said the case should not be linked to the ongoing nuclear standoff. Relations between North Korea and the US and its allies are at their worst for years.
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