President Bill Clinton took it upon himself to secure the release of two American journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who had both been found guilty of spying and sentenced to 12 years of hard labor in North Korea.
The mission of President Clinton was successful, as North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, granted the two journalists a pardon on humanitarian grounds.
This goes to prove that if you work with your enemies, rather than sit across the world and threaten them, you will get much more productive dialogue. This is the direction the United States was heading at the end of the Clinton administration in 2001. Unfortunately, these promising results were destroyed by the George W. Bush administration.
Did Bill Clinton make a promise to Kim? The White House adamantly says, "No!" I believe, however, that a degree of concession had to come from the Obama administration in order to release these two individuals. It wasn't done on purely humanitarian grounds.
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