Lee and Ling Speak Out

I'm playing catch-up after some vacation time, but Lee and Ling wrote this piece in the LATimes Tuesday detailing their capture and imprisonment.

They concede they entered North Korea briefly, but, sure enough, they were snatched on the Chinese side of the border.

Feeling nervous about where we were, we quickly turned back toward China. Midway across the ice, we heard yelling. We looked back and saw two North Korean soldiers with rifles running toward us. Instinctively, we ran.

We were firmly back inside China when the soldiers apprehended us. Producer Mitch Koss and our guide were both able to outrun the border guards. We were not. We tried with all our might to cling to bushes, ground, anything that would keep us on Chinese soil, but we were no match for the determined soldiers. They violently dragged us back across the ice to North Korea and marched us to a nearby army base, where we were detained.

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In researching the story, we sought help from several activists and missionaries who operate in the region. Our main contact was the Seoul-based Rev. Chun Ki-won, a well-known figure in the world of North Korean defectors. Chun and his network have helped smuggle hundreds of North
Koreans out of China and into countries -- including the U.S. -- where they can start new lives. He introduced us to our guide and gave us a cellphone to use in China, telephone numbers to reach his associates and specific instructions on how to contact them. We carefully followed his directions so as to not endanger anyone in this underground world.

Because these defectors live in fear of being repatriated to North Korea, we took extreme caution to ensure that the people we interviewed and their locations were not identifiable. We met with defectors away from their actual places of work or residence. We avoided filming the faces of defectors so as not to reveal their identities. The exception was one woman who allowed us to film her profile.

Most of the North Koreans we spoke with said they were fleeing poverty and food shortages. One girl in her early 20s said she had been told she could find work in the computer industry in China. After being smuggled across the Tumen River, she found herself working with computers, but not in the way she had expected. She became one of a growing number of North Korean women who are being used as Internet sex workers, undressing for online clients on streaming video. Some defectors appeared more nervous about being interviewed than others. But they all agreed that their lives in China, while stark, were better than what they had left behind in North Korea.

Full story here.

Kang Chol-Hwan Weighs In...

Kang Chol-Hwan is a North Korean refugee who has become a South Korean journalist. His chilling memoir of growing up in the Yodok prison camp, The Aquariums of Pyongyang, is one of the best books I've read on North Korea thus far.

Everything he writes is worth reading, including his new column in The Chosun Ilbo, in which he responds to Clinton's visit to Pyongyang to free Ling and Lee.

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton's surprise visit to North Korea to win the release of two American journalists went according to North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's script. The North used the capture of the two reporters to its utmost advantage, the hostages providing it with an ideal opportunity to lure an eminent American onto its soil just when it became subject to tighter sanctions over its nuclear tests and missile launches from the international community and the U.S. in particular. It was a lucky break of the first order.

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In the past half century, the North has essentially consolidated itself by the sole expedient of anti-Americanism, defining the U.S. as a longstanding enemy. According to North Korean propaganda, America is the great imperial power, desperate to destroy the last bastion of socialism. North Korea alone holds out against it now that the Soviet Union has fallen and China has deserted the cause.



Few North Koreans believe the propaganda any longer. Many among the North Korean privileged classes are beginning to think it is not China but North Korea which has deserted socialism, and some of them question the wisdom of dealing with the U.S. alone over the nuclear issue when they feel it could better be resolved with China. Hwang Jang-yeop, a former Secretary of the North Korean Workers' Party who defected to the South, recalls, "I often heard Kim Jong-il slander the Chinese leadership, but never heard him criticize the United States."



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A sort of farce is being played out whereby the Kim regime, whose survival depends on China, is desperate to win recognition from the U.S. Why does North Korea insist on direct negotiations with Washington while distancing itself from its ally China, which holds all the economic and military keys? The answer lies in the threat called reform and opening.


The essence of all North Korean problems including nuclear, missile and human rights issues, is the fixation on maintaining the current dictatorship. Expanding trade between South Korea and China as well as China's rapid economic development represent the biggest threats to Kim Jong-il, who, accordingly, believes that nuclear armament is the only way to defend himself. North Korea's groveling reception of Bill Clinton and the release of detained journalists even as a South Korean remains locked up incommunicado at the joint Kaesong Industrial Complex, can be seen not as a diplomatic victory but as the last desperate effort to maintain the regime through hostage taking.

Full story here.

Bubba Got 'Em Out

Lee and Ling left North Korea with President Clinton. Full story here, and pretty much anywhere else you look for it.

Bill Clinton and Kim Jong-Il in North Korea Tuesday

(Photo: AFP/Getty Images)

CNN: Clinton (Bill) to travel to DPRK

Former President Bill Clinton will travel to North Korea to negotiate the release of American journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling. CNN has the tip from "a source with detailed knowledge of the former president's movements."

I'll have more on this as it plays out. Full story here.

UPDATE: Look's like he's already on his way. Here's the top of the NYT story.

WASHINGTON — Former President Bill Clinton was headed to North Korea to negotiate the release of two American television journalists who were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor for illegally entering North Korean territory, a news agency reported early Tuesday morning in South Korea.

Mr. Clinton was on his way to Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, according to the Yonhap news agency, citing an unidentified source familiar with the situation. The White House declined to comment on Monday night.

Clinton Appeals for Amnesty For Ling and Lee

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has called for amnesty for Laura Ling and Euna Lee, saying that the two women had expressed "great remorse for the incident." Clinton also said that "everyone is very sorry that it happened."

The BBC News article also has more on Han Park, the University of Georgia professor who recently returned from Pyongyang.

If Park's reports are accurate and North Korea is likely to respond to a formal apology, then this might be a very good sign.

Detained Journalists Reportedly Being Held in Guest House

Hat tip: ROK Drop.

If its true, it suggests both that the North Koreans don't want Euna Lee and Laura Ling to be able to report conditions in a labor camp and that they are willing to discuss the journalists' release with the U.S.

From Huffington Post:

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea has delayed sending two convicted U.S. journalists to a prison labor camp, in a possible attempt to seek talks with Washington on their release, a scholar who visited the North said in an interview published Friday.

Laura Ling and Euna lee, who work for former U.S. Vice President Al Gore's California-based Current TV media group, are being kept at guest house in the North Korean capital and have not yet been sent to a prison camp as called for in their sentences, University of Georgia political scientist Han Park said.

"I heard from North Korean officials that the American journalists were doing fine at a guest house in Pyongyang," Park told South Korea's JoongAng Ilbo newspaper. Park, originally from South Korea, arrived Thursday in Seoul following a trip to Pyongyang.

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North Korea's move not to carry out the sentence suggests that it could release them through a dialogue with the United States and they could be set free at an early date, depending on the U.S. gesture," Park said.

Separately, Park told South Korea's Yonhap news agency that the issue of the journalists could be resolved if the U.S. government offers an official apology over their hostile acts and promises that such things won't happen again.

He also predicted that Washington and Pyongyang could hold a dialogue soon over the journalists' release and their return to the U.S., according to Yonhap. No timeframe for a possible meeting was given, and officials in Washington could not immediately be reached to comment on the likelihood of such discussions taking place.

Detained Journalist Talks to Sister - A Message from the DPRK?

From Reuters:

Lisa Ling told Sacramento NBC affiliate KCRA that her sister Laura told her by telephone on Tuesday that she and colleague Lee had violated North Korean law and needed help from the U.S. government to secure amnesty.

She quoted Laura Ling as saying: "We broke the law, we are sorry, and we need help. We need our government's help to try and get amnesty because that really is our only hope."

Soon afterward, U.S. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly called on North Korea to release them on grounds of "amnesty," implying for the first time that the U.S. government believes they committed an offense.

Previously, the State Department had called for their release on "humanitarian" grounds and had not acknowledged the possibility of any wrongdoing.

Lisa Ling goes on to say that this phone calls sounded different from the two previous conversations she'd had with her sister since Laura was detained in March; this time, her sister spoke very slowly and deliberately. Full story here.

Very possible, of course, that the entire call was staged or that the slow and deliberate speech was Ling reciting a prepared statement. If that's the case, and its the North telling her to ask the US government for help, does this mean they're willing to talk?

Euna Lee and Laura Ling (Photo: AP)