Laura and Euna

As most of us know, Sacramento-born journalist Laura Ling and her colleague Euna Lee were seized and jailed in North Korea on March 17 while reporting for Current TV, a San Francisco-based media group.

Word came last week from Pyongyang’s official news agency that the two go to trial next week, June 4, on charges that they entered the country illegally and intending “hostile acts.”

Ling, who graduated from Del Campo High School in Fair Oaks in 1994, has reported from many dangerous locales. She is the sister of journalist and Oprah correspondent Lisa Ling and the daughter of a local dad who has said both his daughters were always “too adventurous.”

It is abominable that Ling and Lee are being confined in this way, especially since they are clearly being held as part of a game of international chess related to North Korea’s nuclear testing. Considering all this, it was heartening last week, when U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the fact that they’ve been given an actual trial date may be a sign that their detention will end soon.