Download  For a long while Kim Hyun Hee's life was on hold and she certainly wasn't travelling anywhere.

She was the North Korean spy condemned to death for blowing up a commercial airliner and killing 115 people.

But after escaping the gallows because of a Presidential pardon, Kim Hyun Hee has been allowed to leave South Korea, for the first time in more than a decade, to meet the families of Japanese citizens abducted by Pyongyang's agents.

Mark Willacy of Radio Australia has this report from Japan.

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North Korea says it will continue to co-operate with the US on ending its nuclear programme and agrees that stalled talks need to resume.

The country's foreign ministry said Pyongyang would work with the US to "narrow remaining differences".

Reclusive leader Kim Jong il is sure to be commended by his official media for the move.

And as reporter Jason Strother tells us, there is one North Korean anchorwoman whose job it is to sing his praises.

He has the story from Seoul.

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South Korean media is reporting that North Korean leader Kim Jong il may be suffering from pancreatic cancer.

In South Korea, news about the so-called Dear Leader’s health is very easy to come by.

But for North Koreans, who have grown up on official propaganda, they only learn about Kim’s alleged illnesses after they escape.  

There are now 16 thousand North Koreans who have defected to South Korea.  

But they don’t just move into their new homes after they arrive. 

They first must spend three months at a government run center called Hanawon.

There they learn the ins and outs of living in the capitalist world. 

Jason Strother takes us inside the centre.

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North Korea’s recent offensive moves and statements have been punctuated by the detention and sentencing of two American journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who were detained by North Korean soldiers three months ago on the border between North Korea and China as they shot video footage for a documentary on human rights abuses.

Whilst they claim to have been on Chinese territory at the time a Pyongyang court sentenced them to 12 years in a labour camp for their supposed illegal entry and hostile actions towards the secretive state.

The attention the two women have received has greatly overshadowed, at least for the time being, the issue Ling and Lee were apparently trying to spotlight:  the abuse of North Korean women by human traffickers along the North Korea-China border.   

It is a trade that has scarred the lives of tens of thousands of women and it is creating a whole new generation of children at risk.

For Asia Calling, Kurt Achin has more from Seoul.