A CHEERFUL SIGHT.

Was it not a cheerful sight, yesterday, to see Journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee descending from the private jet of a Hollywood film magnate, after their flight from Pyongyang. They have been released from serving their prison sentences imposed on them by the North Korean leader Kim Jong IL.

The North Koreans called the gesture to let them go, a "special pardon", at the behest of former President Clinton, who flew to meet with Kim face to face to effect their flight to freedom.
Their arrival in the United States was a joyful one too, for their own families, and for former Vice-President Al Gore, for whom the two women worked.

However, looking back on North Korea's activities in recent months of launching missiles, left, right and center to cause International crises; and its insistence on developing nuclear weapons, it was about time that its leader demonstrated to the rest of the world that he was also human.

North Korea would not come to any talks designed to stop its nuclear program, and was continually flexing its military muscle to scare the daylights out of its neighbors. Its latest action, although purely diplomatic, would be regarded as showing some sense in the rationalization that it has finally become aware that it was the number one objectionable nation in the world, and that must stop. There must be a change in the thinking processes of its leadership.

They should realize that the days of turning a whole country into a vast military camp was over. Their country has been isolated by the International Community for the single reason that, it has been acting, and continued to act "stupidly", in terms of simmering down and dealing with world affairs as any genteel nation would do.

They have ecosystem and environmental problems; their agriculture has been down graded over the years, and there was widespread famine and malnutrition across the country. They were in dire need of help from the U.S. and other benevolent countries.

They should therefore use this opportunity, which was somewhat of a lackadaisical relationship in nature, to invite the U.S. Secretary of State, Mrs. Hillary Clinton, to sit down at a table and have some talks with her, just as they did with former President Bill Clinton, if only just to ease the tension between the two nations.