“Bill Can Still Get the Women,” ran a headline in the New York Post on Wednesday, as former president Bill Clinton returned from North Korea having met its dictator and secured the release of two reporters imprisoned (or held hostage) since March. If the language was exuberant, there was certainly cause for exuberance. Laura Ling and Euna Lee of CurrentTV, the internet news start-up, were arrested after crossing into North Korea from China. In June the pair were sentenced to 12 years’ hard labour.

North Korea’s recent misbehaviour complicated the effort to get them back. In recent months the country has fired missiles near Japan and tested a nuclear bomb. It has pulled out of the six-party talks meant to trammel its nuclear programme and reneged on an industrial partnership with South Korea. North Korea has been helping the Burmese junta build a nuclear reactor, the Sydney Morning Herald reported a week ago. When the young women were captured, Pyongyang appeared too unreasonable to negotiate. Now it is natural to worry that their release involved dangerous concessions.