[Original post, 16 Jun 09]
I’ll certainly reserve judgment until we see the videotape and until Ms. Ling and Ms. Lee can freely authenticate it, but if that’s true, it would be, well, stupid, even if it were done with the purpose of informing us about an important issue:
“We’ve just entered a North Korean courtyard without permission,” the Korean translation of their narration on the videotape said, according to KCNA. One of them picked up and pocketed a stone as a memento of the illegal move, the report said. [AP]
Again, I emphasize that this is KCNA we’re talking about. Even if we see video, I’d need to be convinced that it wasn’t staged after the fact.
At the same time, North Korea is also dispensing with the idea that it sentenced these women to twelve years in a labor camp not so much for the misdemeanor of crossing the border, but because of the subject matter on which they dared to report:
North Korea said Tuesday that two convicted U.S. journalists admitted to crossing its border with China and shooting video for a smear campaign against Pyongyang over its human rights conditions.
The official Korean Central News Agency released a detailed report “laying bare the facts about the crimes committed by the American journalists,” Chinese-American Laura Ling, 32, and Korean-American Seung-Un Lee, 36, who are reporters for the San Francisco-based Current TV.
“At the trial the accused admitted that what they did were criminal acts committed, prompted by the political motive to isolate and stifle the socialist system of the DPRK (North Korea) by faking up moving images aimed at falsifying its human rights performance and hurling slanders and calumnies at it,” the report said. [Yonhap News]
One should never presume that any official North Korean statement is true, but if it is, then an appropriate punishment for stupidity is no more than 30 days in jail and a good scare. The actual punishment for reporting the truth about North Korea’s atrocities, on the other hand, appears to be much more severe. Such things must be discouraged at all costs.
How long do you suppose it will be before we see more of Barbara Demick’s reporting from the border regions, or more documentaries like the heartbreaking BBC/Chosun Ilbo collaboration, “On the Border?” If there aren’t, it’s because terrorism works. And unless President Obama is willing to encourage more of it, he must hold North Korea accountable. Hey, don’t take it from me, take it from Tom Plate, no less. Plate is now questioning every reason why I’ve spent the last five years not reading him. Good for Tom Plate for being honest enough to do so.
Update: What KCNA’s report and Flickr pages tell us, but first, the Committee to Protect Journalists responds:
“These two journalists were convicted after a trial that was not open to international observers. There has been no transparency in the way North Korea has treated them and this report does not mitigate our concerns about their well-being,” said Bob Dietz, CPJ Asia program coordinator. “At the same time we are hopeful that these latest developments pave the way for the release of these journalists on humanitarian grounds.” [link]
I wish I shared their optimism. This plot has thickened.
Oh, and the original KCNA report, has some interesting details. For one thing, KCNA says the episode took place near Onsong (Google Earth images here), which is very far downstream on the Tumen River and not a place where I’d think the river would run dry in any time of year. I searched for images of the river border from as many different times of year as possible; here’s what it looks like in July, August, August, October, October, autumn, and in winter, when hell really does freeze over. None shows the river running dry, and it seems unlikely — though not impossible — that it would still have been completely frozen over and safe to cross in March.
What does this tell us? For one thing, I think we can rule out the possibility of an accidental crossing.
Another, more surprising, fact we learn from tourists’ Flickr pages is that apparently, tourists and Chinese boatmen have been fairly casual about floating right up to and photographing the North Korean side of the river in that area, including border guard posts. Would I do it? Hell, no. But apparently, this was an established practice in that region. If Ms. Ling and Ms. Lee merely floated up to the North Korean bank of the river, then for some reason, North Korea chose that particular time and those particular women to change the rules.
KCNA’s report mentions nothing of a boat, but it seems unlikely the women would have crossed the river in that area without one. I see just three possibilities: either they crossed the river intentionally (stupid if true, but hardly a proven fact); they floated up to the North Korean side with a video camera and were nabbed there (an excusable indiscretion, in light of past practice); or they were abducted and taken across (international kidnapping, hardly unprecedented for the North Koreans, but also not proven here).
As usual, there are some curious word choices in KNCA’s translation:
The investigation proved that the intruders crossed the border and committed the crime for the purpose of making animation files to be used for an anti-DPRK smear campaign over its human rights issue.
The preliminary investigation proved that they had a confab on producing and broadcasting a documentary slandering the DPRK with Mitch Koss, executive producer of programming of the Current TV, David Neuman, president of programming, and David Harleston, head of the Legal Department of Current TV, and other men in Los Angeles, U.S. in January.
A trial of the accused was held at the Pyongyang City Court from June 4 to 8.
At the trial the accused admitted that what they did were criminal acts committed, prompted by the political motive to isolate and stifle the socialist system of the DPRK by faking up moving images aimed at falsifying its human rights performance and hurling slanders and calumnies at it. [KCNA]
Whether the words “animation” and “moving images” represent some indecipherable and preposterous claim, or whether this is just typically stilted KNCA translation is difficult to say. What is clear is that the “crime” of which Ms. Ling and Ms. Lee were really sentenced wasn’t so much the alleged crossing of the river but the anticipated content of the report, as revealed by Ling and Lee under North Korean interrogation.
The report ends with this cryptic statment:
We are following with a high degree of vigilance the attitude of the U.S. which spawned the criminal act against the DPRK.
Translation: The price of their freedom is ransom and censorship.
Update, 18 Jun 09: The Joongang Ilbo reports on the arrest of Ling and Lee’s “ethnic Korean” guide, although the report answers none of our most important questions about the circumstances of the arrest:
Chun Ki-won, a Christian pastor and human rights activist, said the guide, Kim Seong-cheol, was arrested in China after he managed to evade North Korean guards on March 17, the day Euna Lee and Laura Ling were caught near the China-North Korea border on the Tumen River while reporting on North Korean refugees.
“I believe the Chinese arrested Kim to question him about the journalists’ situation,” said Chun, who declined to provide further, personal details on Kim. [Joongang Ilbo]
This detail does seem less likely that Kim was a North Korean agent:
Chun said he introduced Kim to Lee and Ling, journalists for the San Francisco-based Current TV, upon their request in January.
“Current TV wanted to send Caucasians on this reporting trip,” Chun recalled. “But I told them reporting on refugees had to be carried out in secret and having Caucasians would make them stand out.”
Chun said he arranged meetings with refugees for the journalists. “I told them never to cross the border,” he said.
The pastor added Lee, who was “fluent in Korean,” called him twice a day to provide him with updates. Lee and Ling were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor on June 8 for their illegal entry.
If Kim was working for the North Koreans, the North Koreans would already have paid him to give them Chun himself. Chun, for all his faults, is cagey enough to have outsmarted the North Koreans and the Chinese for many dangerous years, despite having become a major irritant to both governments. To me, that means (contrary to what one source had told me) that the North Koreans probably did not lure Ling and Lee to their capture. I hope for Kim’s sake that he’s not a North Korean himself. If he is, the Chinese will send him across the border, where he’d have a very bleak future.
