The jet carrying Euna Lee and Laura Ling, reporters for Al Gore’s San Francisco, based Current TV, and Clinton arrived in Burbank at dawn. Clinton met with communist leader Kim Jong Il on Tuesday to secure the women's release.

 Lee emerged from the jet first and was greeted by husband Michael Saldate and daughter Hana. Ling embraced her husband, Iain Clayton, amid teary family members.

 "The past 140 days have been the most difficult, heart-wrenching days of our lives," Ling said.T hirty hours earlier, Ling said, "We feared that any moment we could be sent to a hard labor camp."
 The women were kept in enforced isolation and fed poor-quality food, Ling's sister said.
 
"They were kept apart most of the time. ... On the day of their trial, they hugged each other and that was it," Lisa Ling told reporters outside her sister's home in the San Fernando,Valley of Los Angeles.