In Their Words: Laura Ling and Euna Lee

They've spoken.

I've copied below some excerpts from an opinion piece written by Laura Ling and Euna Lee, the American journalists who spent 140 days in a North Korean jail. The column was posted on the Los Angeles Times website last night.

Interestingly, the thing that shines through the most in this piece is the women's passion and determination to shed light on the lives of North Koreans who have been trafficked across the China-North Korea border. Ling and Lee write:

"We had traveled to the area to document a grim story of human trafficking for Current TV. During the previous week, we had met and interviewed several North Korean defectors -- women who had fled poverty and repression in their homeland, only to find themselves living in a bleak limbo in China. Some had, out of desperation, found work in the online sex industry; others had been forced into arranged marriages."

Here are a few more glimpses of their experience.

On Their Capture

"When we set out, we had no intention of leaving China, but when our guide beckoned for us to follow him beyond the middle of the river, we did, eventually arriving at the riverbank on the North Korean side. He pointed out a small village in the distance where he told us that North Koreans waited in safe houses to be smuggled into China via a well-established network that has escorted tens of thousands across the porous 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."

Shining the Light

"Our motivations for covering this story were many. First and foremost, we believe that journalists have a responsibility to shine light in dark places, to give voice to those who are too often silenced and ignored. One of us, Euna, is a devout Christian whose faith infused her interest in the story. The other, Laura, has reported on the exploitation of women around the world for years. We wanted to raise awareness about the harsh reality facing these North Korean defectors who, because of their illegal status in China, live in terror of being sent back to their homeland...

Many people have asked about our strength to endure such hardships and uncertainty. But our experiences pale when compared with the hardship facing so many people living in North Korea or as illegal immigrants in China...we would rather redirect this interest to the story we went to report on, a story about despairing North Korean defectors who flee to China only to find themselves living a different kind of horror. We hope that now, more than ever, the plight of these people and of the aid groups helping them are not forgotten."

Life in Limbo

"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."

Protecting Their Sources

"We were left for a very brief time with our belongings. With guards right outside the room, we furtively destroyed evidence in our possession by swallowing notes and damaging videotapes."

Read the entire column here, on the LA Times website. I promise, it's worth it.

They're Home!

As everyone who glances at the news knows by now, American journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling are back home in the United States, following former President Bill Clinton's 20-hour trip to North Korea. Here's a Daily News article by Michael Saul with more of the details.

They didn't have to break rocks, just eat them.
As Laura Ling and Euna Lee celebrated their freedom and thanked Bill Clinton for his rescue mission on Wednesday, harrowing details of their ordeal as North Korean prisoners emerged.
Prison food was rice peppered with rocks. They were held in isolation from each other, gripped by fear that they would be shipped to one of the infamous hard-labor gulags in Kim Jong Il's Communist state.
"The past 140 days have been the most difficult, heart-wrenching time of our lives," Ling said, choking back sobs just moments after the two journalists were reunited with their families.
In a classic Hollywood ending, Ling, 32, and Lee, 36, bounced off a private jet at 6:19 a.m. at the Burbank airport near Los Angeles and rushed to embrace loved ones.
As tears flowed, Lee hugged her husband and knelt down to lock her 4-year-old daughter, Hana, in a tight embrace. Ling kissed her husband. Soon after, the families applauded when Clinton emerged from the plane.
"Thirty hours ago, Euna Lee and I were prisoners in North Korea. We feared that at any moment we could be sent to a hard-labor camp, and, then, suddenly, we were told that we were going to a meeting," Ling said.
"When we walked in through the doors, we saw, standing before us, President Bill Clinton," she said, pausing with emotion as she placed her hand on her chest.
"We were shocked, but we knew instantly in our hearts that the nightmare of our lives was finally coming to an end and now we stand here, home and free."
In June, the North Korean regime sentenced the journalists, who work for former Vice President Al Gore's Current TV cable channel, to 12 years of hard labor for illegally entering the country.
Kim pardoned them during Clinton's dramatic 20-hour visit.

Read the full story here: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/us_world/2009/08/06/2009-08-06_ling_lee_call_captivity_a_nightmare.html#ixzz0NXhFPOLD

And Throw Away the Key

A dozen may be a good thing when you're talking doughnuts or roses, but 12 is a big number when referring to years. And according to the latest reports out of North Korea, that is the number of years that U.S. journalists Laura Ling (bottom picture) and Euna Lee (top picture) will be spending doing backbreaking work in a North Korean labor camp.

The two women were sentenced today, after they were arrested by North Korean authorities for allegedly crossing the Chinese border into Korean territory approximately three months ago. At the time of their arrest, the journalists were based in China and were reporting on the trafficking of North Korean women for a California-based TV station owned by Al Gore. Family members have said that the reporters did not intend to cross the border into North Korea.
Word of the women's sentencing has sparked speculation that the reporters are being used as bargaining chips by the North Korean government, which has recently faced global ire as the reclusive country allegedly continues its testing of nuclear weapons.
NPR has done an excellent wrap-up of the situation; click here to read their story about the journalists' dilemma.
The Los Angeles Times offers a chilling perspective on what life inside those camps would be like for the two women. Here is an excerpt from their article:

"The first thing that passed through my mind when I heard about the verdict was that, from an American perspective, this is tantamount to a death sentence," said Scott Snyder, director of the Center for U.S.-Korea Policy for the Asia Foundation, a Washington-based think tank.
"There aren't a lot of guarantees in that type of environment. It's different from any prison that exists in the modern-day United States. This is a very sobering challenge for a new administration."

North Korean defector Kim Hyuck, who spent a total of seven months between 1998 and 2000 in a "kyo-hwa-so," said that the percentage of prisoners who die from the harsh conditions would be unimaginable in the west.

"It is not an easy place," he said of the camps. "Centers for men and women are separate. But even [the] women's place is not comfortable at all. . . . When I was in the center, roughly 600-700 out of a total 1,500 died."

Hawk said many of the re-education camps are affiliated with mines or textile factories where inmates labor for long hours, shifts that are often followed by work criticism sessions and the forced memorization of dry North Korean policy doctrine.

The literal meaning of a "kyo-hwa-so" in Korean is "a place to make a good person through education," said Hawk, who interviewed a dozen gulag survivors for his study for a group known as the U.S. Committee for Humans Rights in North Korea.

Kim, 28, who now studies math at a South Korean university, said that escape from the camps is nearly impossible.

...

As I keep up to date on this situation, my heart is saddened for the women at the center of this political maelstrom. But they, at least, have the benefit of an entire nation that is up in arms over their imprisonment, and officials remain hopeful that their situation will be resovled diplomatically. Because news from within North Korea is sporadic at best, it is all too easy to forget the worries of the 28 million who call the nation home.

A 2006 report from Amnesty International details the woes Koreans face, including starvation (an estimated 12 percent of the population suffers from "severe hunger," and 37 percent of children and one-third of North Korean mothers are malnourished). Freedom of expression is non-existent; Reporters Sans Frontiers has reported that dozens of North Korean journalists have been "re-educated" for mistakes as simple as misspelling the name of an official. Tens of thousands of North Koreans have fled across the Amnok River to China seeking a better life.
It has been said that a picture is worth a thousand words. This 2003 photo (which you may have seen before) aptly proves the point: while the lights of South Korea gleam brightly on the southern part of the peninsula, North Korea is dark, stark evidence of the country's isolation from the rest of the world.

Click here to read a MSNBC story on what life is like inside the secretive nation.

Fair trade is not an option for the people of North Korea, at least not for the foreseeable future. But my hope is that one day they will be free, like their brothers in the south, to support themselves and craft a life of their own choosing. And until that day, our hearts and our prayers are with Ling, Lee, and their waiting families.