By Michael Ireland Chief Correspondent, ASSIST News Service

   WEST ROSEVILLE, CA (ANS) -- A Southern California church feels a special connection to one of two American journalists sentenced to a harsh prison sentence Monday by the North Korean government.

   Laura Ling, the cousin of Brandon Yip, the worship pastor at Bayside Covenant Church of West Roseville, California, was sentenced along with fellow journalist Euna Lee to 12 years of hard labor in prison in a closed-door trial that began on June 4.

   "Our church is just calling out for prayer for Laura and Euna Lee," Pastor Chuck Wysong said this afternoon, according to Covenant News.

   Ling and Lee have been held since March 17 when North Korean soldiers patrolling the border between China and North Korea detained them.

   According to news accounts, the women were working on a report about North Korean refugees who had fled their homeland in hopes of finding food in China. North Korea officials charge the journalists crossed into North Korean territory "with hostile intent."

   The Central Court of North Korea sentenced Ling and Lee for the "grave crime they committed against the Korean nation and their illegal border crossing," according to the Korean Central News Agency.

   Laura Ling and Euna Lee work for Current TV, a media enterprise of former Vice President Al Gore. She is the younger sister of Lisa Ling, a television journalist who reported undercover in North Korea for National Geographic in 2006. The elder Ling's report exposed the hardships of living in North Korea.

   "We are deeply concerned by the reported sentencing of the two American citizen journalists by North Korean authorities, and we are engaged through all possible channels to secure their release," said U.S. State Department spokesperson Ian Kelly in a statement.

   "We once again urge North Korea to grant the immediate release of the two American citizen journalists on humanitarian grounds."

   Families plead with N. Korea for release

   According to CNN, in a report to which Elise Labott contributed, the families of the two U.S. journalists have pleaded with North Korea for clemency, urging the communist government to "show compassion" and release them.

   Ling and Lee were arrested on March 17 and sentenced after a closed-door trial for what the state-run North Korean news agency KCNA called the "grave crime they committed against the Korean nation and their illegal border crossing."

   CNN said that in a joint statement Monday, their families said they were "shocked and devastated" by the trial and sentence, and urged Pyongyang "to show compassion and grant Laura and Euna clemency and allow them to return home to their families."

   "Laura and Euna are journalists who went to the China-North Korea border to do a job," they said.

   "We don't know what really happened on March 17, but if they wandered across the border without permission, we apologize on their behalf and we are certain that they have also apologized."

   CNN reported that in Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters the United States is seeking the immediate release of the two journalists on humanitarian grounds.

   "Obviously, we are deeply concerned about the length of the sentences and the fact that this trial was conducted totally in secret with no observers," she said. "And we are engaged in all possible ways, through every possible channel, to secure their release."

   The families said Ling suffers from an unspecified "serious medical condition," and Lee has a 4-year-old daughter "who is displaying signs of anguish over the absence of her mother."

   "We believe that the three months they have already spent under arrest with little communication with their families is long enough," they said.

   CNN said the United States has no diplomatic relations with North Korea, and Sweden represents U.S. interests there. The Swedish ambassador told the U.S. State Department that no observers were allowed in the courtroom for the trial, and the ambassador was allowed to see them only three times.

   Senior Obama Administration officials told CNN that several weeks ago, Clinton wrote a letter to the North Korean leadership appealing for the journalists' release on humanitarian grounds.

   In the letter, officials said, Clinton told the North Koreans that the families were deeply concerned about the women and went into details on their personal situations -- that Ling has serious health problems and Lee is the mother of a young child.

   CNN reported the officials said there has been no response from the North Koreans, and Clinton told reporters she would not discuss "private diplomatic efforts."

   But she said Washington views the case as something separate from the ongoing diplomatic standoff over North Korea's nuclear arms program, CNN stated.

   Several senior administration officials said the idea of sending either former Vice President Gore or New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson to Pyongyang on a mission to get the journalists released has been floated to the North Koreans, according to the CNN report.

   CNN reports the officials said that no answer has come so far, but the expectation has been that once the trial ended, the North would accept a visit by either Gore or Richardson to secure the journalists' release.

   Richardson was cautiously optimistic about the case on Monday.

   "The sentence was harsh, but the good news in the sentence is it was not for espionage -- it was for entering illegally, hostile acts," he told CNN.

   "The rhetoric of the North Koreans has not been terribly harsh against the two women," he added.

   CNN explained that officials said if precedent is any indicator, and given the way the women have been treated -- staying in a hotel for the past few months -- it is possible the women will never see the inside of a prison.

   Richardson traveled to the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, several times to secure the release of an American detainee in 1996 and facilitate the return of the bodies of POWs from the Korean War. In the 1996 case, the United States paid the isolated communist state what were called "hotel bills" for his stay.

   CNN reported that officials said the issue of a possible payment to North Korea has not yet been discussed, but they said the United States would not be averse to playing along.

   Jim Jacobson, President of Christian Freedom International (CFI), which has often lobbied on behalf of those detained by restrictive government regimes, called the sentence, "tragic."

   In a statement obtained by ANS, he said: "I suspect they will be released, but not soon. The only silver lining is that North Korea has shown leniency to Americans in the past.

   "In 1996 it took three months to get a guy out, but relations with the United States weren't as bad as they are now. There will be a fair amount of negotiating and talking, and then I suspect they will make a 'humanitarian' gesture, expecting something in return."

   ANS founder, Dan Wooding, one of the few Christian journalists to report from North Korea, believes that the harsh sentences given to Laura Ling and Euna Lee, is part of a game of 'chicken' the North Koreans are playing to try and gain an advantage in their dispute with the United States about their nuclear status.

   "The North Koreans are trying to flex their muscles in this dispute and want the United States to eat humble pie about their criticism of their nuclear aspirations," he said.

   "I don't believe they plan to keep the two journalists for long, but are holding them hostage in a game of who blinks first.

   "The North Koreans, from my first-hand experience, are so cut off from world opinion, that they don't understand how bad they look by holding these two journalists."

   Wooding, who went to North Korea in 1994 after the death of Kim Il-sung, said he was astonished how little the North Koreans understand about the rest of the world.

   "They do things like sentencing these two journalists as a way to gain respect, but quite the opposite is the case," he said.

   "I hope and pray that they will soon wake up to the fact that no one but themselves, sees any point in keeping the journalists any longer. If they really want America, and the rest of the free world to respect them, they will free them immediately."