The North Koreans Know Dick Cheney

And they're no Dick Cheney:

Ling and Lee, journalists for former Vice President Al Gore's media venture Current TV, based in San Francisco, have become pawns in a global chess match.

"The girls have become hostages, and a lot of things will depend on high politics," said Andrei N. Lankov, a North Korea specialist at Kookmin University in Seoul and one of the last people whom the two Asian-American journalists contacted before they traveled to North Korea's border with China to investigate the situation of refugees.

Ling's family in suburban Sacramento, Calif., didn't respond to requests for comment. Lee's family couldn't be reached.

North Korea said this week that it would put the two Americans on trial, and suggested that they could face years in a prison camp.

Scholars of North Korea said the women's situation was dramatic but that Pyongyang probably would seek to exchange them for concessions rather than throw them in prison.

"I'm not overly worried about their welfare," said Aidan Foster-Carter, an author on North Korea issues who's retired from Leeds University in Britain. The North Koreans "will want to trade them for something or other."

North Korea appears to be holding the women in a protocol house in Pyongyang.

"The rumor was that they are being housed at one of the guest villas," said Han S. Park, a University of Georgia expert who was visiting North Korea as part of a private U.S. delegation after the women were captured. Park told CNN International that the North Koreans scoffed at any suggestion that the Americans were receiving harsh treatment.

"They laughed. 'We are not Guantanamo.' That's what they said," Park said.