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If there's a shred of good news in the sentencing of American journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling to 12 years in a North Korean prison labor camp, it's that they'll probably never see the inside of one.

That's because their plight is receiving significant media coverage here in the United States and across the globe.

While Pyongyang hasn't yet linked them to anything more than "hostile acts"� against the state (another thankful development), they could be swept up in the vortex of big-power politics that includes the likes of nukes and long-range missiles.

Of course, Lee and Ling most likely aren't guilty of anything more than getting lost somewhere along the Chinese-North Korean border. Indeed, their efforts to expose...