South Korea ? North Korea might release two convicted American journalists if the United States offers a gesture such as an official apology, a U.S.-based scholar who visited Pyongyang said in interviews published Friday.

Laura Ling and Euna Lee were detained in March near the North Korean border with China and sentenced last month to 12 years of hard labor for entering the country illegally and for “hostile acts.” The two work for former U.S. Vice President Al Gore’s California-based Current TV media group.

University of Georgia political scientist Han Park said that the two are being kept at a guest house in the North Korean capital and the delay in sending them to a prison labor camp may be an attempt to seek talks with Washington on their release.

“North Korea’s move not to carry out the sentence suggests that it could release them through a dialogue with the United States and they could be set free at an early date, depending on the U.S. gesture,” Park said in an interview with South Korea’s

JoongAng Ilbo newspaper.