N. Korea: Journalists admitted crimes

PYONGYANG, North Korea, June 16 (UPI) -- Two women U.S. journalists held by North Korea have admitted they had political motives in secretly entering the country, Pyongyang says.

The official Korean Central News Agency said in a statement Tuesday that the captured journalists have confessed to crossing the border from China to shoot video as part of a "smear campaign" on human rights conditions in the North, the South Korean Yonhap News Agency reported.

Chinese-American Laura Ling, 32, and Korean-American Seung-Un Lee, 36, reporters for Current TV of San Francisco, were captured March 17 by North Korean guards near the border with China, and have been sentenced to 12 years of hard labor.

"At the trial the accused admitted that what they did were criminal acts committed, prompted by the political motive to isolate and stifle the socialist system of the DPRK (North Korea) by faking up moving images aimed at falsifying its human rights performance and hurling slanders and calumnies at it," the KCNA report said.