SEOUL: North Korea on Tuesday released two jailed American journalists after a visit from former US President Bill Clinton in the highest-level US contact with North Korea since Clinton was president nearly a decade ago.

North Korea’s KCNA news agency said North Korean 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 Clinton’s Vice President Al Gore.

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 North Korea’s KCNA news agency described as an “exhaustive conversation” over dinner with the ailing North Korean leader and his top aides.

The White House denied a report by KCNA that said Clinton had carried a message to North Korea from US President Barack Obama.

“That’s not true,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters in Washington. Obama adviser David Axelrod told MSNBC that Clinton was on a “private humanitarian mission” and that “I don’t think it’s related to other issues.”

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 labor for what it called grave crimes.

Arriving on a private jet on a trip to North Korea he had hoped to take before leaving office in January 2001, Clinton was presented with flowers by a girl dressed in traditional costume before he was led to a black limousine and driven away.

ABC News said Clinton met with the detained Americans on Tuesday. Citing a government source, the US television network described the meeting between Clinton and the reporters as “very emotional.” The source was hopeful Ling and Lee would be back in the United States on Wednesday, ABC said.

His landmark visit, which was not announced in advance by North Korea or the US, comes at a time of heightened tensions between Washington and Pyongyang, foes during the Korean War of the 1950s, over the regime’s nuclear program.

North Korea in recent months has conducted a nuclear test and test-fired an array of ballistic missiles in violation of UN Security Council resolutions, with Washington leading the push to punish Pyongyang for its defiance.

It is only the second visit to Pyongyang by a former US leader. Jimmy Carter traveled to North Korea for talks with Kim’s father, Kim Il Sung, in 1994 in a groundbreaking meeting during a time of similar tensions.

Though Clinton was in North Korea on a private basis, his visit was treated by North Korea as a high-profile one, with senior officials meeting him on the tarmac.