U.S. civil rights activist Jesse Jackson says he is willing to go to North Korea to help secure the release of two American journalists detained by the North.

National Public Radio (NPR) of the U.S. says the Baptist minister has expressed his will to engage in sensitive diplomacy with North Korea to free Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who have been sentenced to 12 years of hard labor.

NPR noted that Jackson has been successful in several hostage negotiations in the past, including assisting in the release of U.S. soldiers held in Kosovo in 1999.

Ling and Lee, journalists for Current TV, were detained by the North while filming a documentary on March 17th near its border with China for what the North says were “hostile acts.”