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Bill Clinton's unexpected and successful trip to Pyongyang to secure the release of two American journalists sentenced to 12-year prison terms was a highly theatrical coup for the former president. His surprise arrival in North Korea, the three hours of face-to-face talks with an ailing though evidently still sentient Kim Jong-il, the tearful dawn homecoming in California – it was a perfectly executed foreign-policy triumph, played out live on the world's TV screens.

But who has gained from it? Obviously, Euna Lee and Laura Ling have won their freedom from what was, in effect, a state-sponsored hostage-taking operation by one of the world's most loathsome regimes. A carefully orchestrated back-channel operation involving the White House ensured that their freedom had been...