Former U.S. President Bill Clinton departed North Korea for Los Angeles on Wednesday with two American journalists who had been detained in the communist country since March.

Clinton's spokesman Matt McKenna said Wednesday that the former president and Laura Ling and Euna Lee left for Los Angeles in a chartered flight. The spokesman said the two reporters will soon be reunited with their families.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il granted a special pardon to the two reporters after a meeting with Clinton in Pyongyang.

Washington, however, has yet to make any official announcement on the news.

Ling and Lee, reporters for former U.S. Vice President Al Gore's Current TV media outlet, were arrested along the North Korean-Chinese border in March and sentenced in June to 12 years of hard labor for illegal entry and engaging in "hostile acts."