North Korea has released two jailed American journalists after a visit from former US president Bill Clinton.
The state KCNA news agency said North Korea's leader Kim Jong-il had issued a special pardon to the two journalists, Euna Lee and Laura Ling of US media outlet Current TV, which was co-founded by Mr Clinton's vice president Al Gore.
The two journalists were arrested on the North Korea-China border in March and accused of illegal entry. A North Korean court sentenced both of them last month to 12 years hard labour for what it called "grave crimes".
Mr Clinton was the highest-level American to visit North Korea since his secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, went there in 2000.
He was greeted warmly on his arrival and had what KCNA described as an "exhaustive conversation" over dinner with ailing Mr Kim Jong-il and his top aides.
The White House denied a report by KCNA that said Mr Clinton had carried a message to North Korea from President Barack Obama.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs denied the report in Washington. "That's not true," he said. Obama adviser David Axelrod told MSNBC that Mr Clinton was on a "private humanitarian mission" unrelated to other issues.
Arriving on a private jet on a trip to North Korea he had hoped to take before leaving office in January 2001, Mr Clinton was presented with flowers by a girl dressed in traditional costume before he was led to a black limousine and driven away.
Mr Clinton's visit could have a side benefit of improving the atmosphere between the United States and North Korea that could restart talks over the isolated state's nuclear weapons.
North Korea's chief nuclear negotiator, Kim Kye-gwan, was among those greeting Mr Clinton - whose administration was reported to have considered bombing the North's Yongbyon atomic plant in the early 1990s during a prior time of tensions over Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions.
Many analysts predicted Pyongyang would use the journalists as leverage to wring concessions from Washington, which sought to place UN sanctions on the North for a May nuclear test.
The White House described Mr Clinton's visit as private. "While this solely private mission to secure the release of two Americans is on the ground, we will have no comment. We do not want to jeopardize the success of former President Clinton's mission," Mr Gibbs said in a statement.
It is the second time a former US president has headed to the communist state to try to defuse a crisis. Former president Jimmy Carter flew there in 1994 when tensions were running high, again over the North's nuclear weapons program.
Mr Carter helped broker a deal at that time whereby Pyongyang suspended construction of a 50-megawatt plutonium reactor in exchange for heating oil and other energy aid.