6. No Larry King. Not tomorrow, not next week, not ever. Larry King is a tool and a blight upon our society, and your support for him poisons a world in which my children will have to live.

It seems they violated the Larry King rule.

I infiltrated North Korean territory 3 times from China and never thought of picking up a rock. Come to think of it, there’s no place on Earth that I can think of where I would want to go pick up a souvenir rock. Maybe the moon though… that would be really cool!

Even if these women try to profit from their misadventures, there’s still hope. Octomom’s been out of the news since the public soured on her. Likewise, Americans won’t have much sympathy for the two leads in Brokedown Palace II: Rocks and Rice in a North Korean State Guesthouse when they realize what the women risked to get a few “I was at the border” souvenir photos.

North Korean human rights has already slipped under the US media radar. The attention is now on the two women and their experiences. At first, I was pleased by the silence of Euna Lee, but I now I realize that both Euna and Laura are probably saving their stories for the highest bidder while big sister Lisa keeps the story on the front page by parsing tidbits about rocks in the rice and the guards being lovely. I’m glad these women are back home with their families and I’m glad our government offered some assistance in freeing them, but I’m sickened by the prospect that they may profit from their own poor judgment that turned themselves into a bargaining chip for the North and possibly risked the lives of the refugees they were supposedly trying to help by communicating their plight.

Public awareness? You must be kidding. The American press, much of which is known for its faulty reporting, correctly published that Lee and Ling did indeed enter the DPRK illegally. So what would the public be aware of now? That these two women were fools?

“why do you think that the Asian backgrounds these women have grant them appeal on the “westen side?” What exactly makes them more appealing to the US public than a white reporter?”

Some western men are attracted to Asian women. Just look at how they are both married to white guys.

Just kidding. Actually, what I meant was that Laura and Euna have become international celebrities, and their Asian-American identity gives them connections to both sides of the world.

As for Lisa Ling, I now understand why some people resent her.
However, I still think that Lisa, Laura, and Euna can help ordinary North Koreans by raising public awareness about them.

As for Lisa Ling: please be aware that in going into the DPRK w/ that crew of Nepalese doctors, she pretty much deceived the DPRK authorities. From now on, North Korea will be even more suspicious than it already is of visiting foreigners, and it’ll make it even harder for foreign relief workers to enter the country. Who loses? The North Koreans who need aid.

Furthermore, during her documentary, Lisa Ling repeatedly mentioned that saying anything critical of the regime could mean a death sentence for any North Korean who dared to do such a thing. She then has the nerve to ask a North Korean family in the presence of Korean Workers’ Party minders if Kim Jong-Il could ever make a mistake – what if they had even hesitated? Do you think those minders would not have acted once the cameras were off and the foreigners were not there? And what if the senior DPRK leadership concludes that the very KWP minders who dealt with the visiting Nepalese delegation somehow contributed to a foreign report which ultimately embarrassed North Korea? Do you think the KWP will hesitate to punish even its own members if the latter are deemed to have acted subversively or against the interests of the state? Where do you think they’ll end up?

They will NOT end up in the comfortable guest house where Euna Lee and Laura Ling stayed. For that, Lisa Ling is not to be admired; her actions were reprehensible.

I am a Puget Sound-based professor of Chinese history who spends part of every year along the Sino-Korean frontier, which means I have an opinion on these matters as well. (Just returned from Dandong/Ji’an/Linjiang/Changbai/Yanji/Hunchun a few weeks ago.)

My two cents: http://adamcathcart.wordpress.com/2009/08/09/laura-ling-euna-lee-and-the-sino-north-korean-border/

Furthermore, you stated: “meeting between a former US president and Kim Jong Il, which was a historic first for both countries. Who knows how this will impact the attitude of North Koreans toward America.” It’s the first time Kim Jong-Il met a former US president, but it’s not the first time the senior leader of North Korea met a former US president. In 1994, Jimmy Carter crossed the DMZ and was taken to Pyongyang to meet w/ Kim Il-Sung.

And you also said, “I watched her documentary about being undercover in North Korea, and it took a lot of guts for a journalist to do that.” Do you understand the implications of her actions? You do, I hope, realize that Lisa Ling went into the DPRK w/ that country’s authorization as she was ostensibly a member of a Nepalese medical assistance group. Throughout the entire documentary, Lisa Ling mentions that any comment critical of the DPRK authorities could consign the said party to prison and even death. But what about the DPRK citizens and the Korean Workers’ Party members assigned to accompany Ling and her Nepalese partners while in North Korea? Did she and National Geographic not know that any wrong facial expression, even, could be enough groups for the DPRK security forces to arrest any of the North Koreans in the film and to send them to a camp?

Furthermore, do you think Kim Jong-Il was happy when he learned he had been duped? How much more difficult will it be from now on for other foreign relief teams enter North Korea? And, if he or other senior-ranking DPRK officials conclude that the KWP minders assigned to chaperone Ling and her group contributed (even if unintentionally) to a production which made North Korea look bad, what do you think will happen to those KWP minders?

Answer: the very same fate that most probably befell any defectors (and their relatives who never left North Korea) whom Laura Ling and Euna Lee interviewed. Their videos were captured, and the DPRK authorities most probably and plausibly acted swiftly and mercilessly to find them and to ship them off to the camps.