A hard regime to defame

6/22/2009 3:31 AM

North Korea has sentenced two female American reporters to 12 years at hard labor for illegal entry and "hostile acts." Part of the evidence against them was a videotape they made in which one of them said, "We just entered a North Korean courtyard without permission."

The government accused the women of a "smear campaign" to falsify North Korea's human rights performance and hurl "slanders and calumnies at it."

North Korea is notoriously hostile to outsiders, but enough is known about life there to understand how difficult it would be to defame the regime of Kim Jong II. It would be a little like libeling Adolf Hitler.