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25 March 2010

Kushibo has posted his much-anticipated response to Lisa Ling.

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Kim Jong Il Death Watch: Mike Madden has the latest rumors in our grim vigil.

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Fears that Russia is preparing to repatriate that North Korean logger who tried to make a break for freedom.

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If famine, cannibalism, child labor, songbun, lousy education, and the risk of becoming a homeless orphan aren’t enough worries for a lifetime, North Korean kids also have to worry about child molesters.

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For those in the D.C. area, PSCORE will hold an event at Georgetown on Saturday, the 27th, on what life is like in North Korea.

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Only a racist would question the legitimacy of Kim Jong Il’s rule.

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Jimmy Carter calls on President Obama to hold direct talks with North Korea — also, Charles Manson, Jefferson Davis, and the San Andreas Fault.

I wonder who briefs Jimmy Carter on current events and what that job pays?

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Critics didn’t seem to like the new anti-American propaganda film about No Gun Ri.

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So you liked the book, then? “Every now again, a book comes round that is so brilliant it makes you want to take to the streets and press into people’s hands, urging them to read it.” Well, it was a good book.

12 Responses

  1. Bravo Kushibo!
    I just read every word of your response to Lisa Ling and share your opinion with regard to Current TV’s Tumen River caper. How Laura could make such a stupid mistake is still baffling beyond belief, and I yearn to hear the alternative version of events from Mitch Koss.

    I am also glad to read Jane MacArtney’s account of the current situation for North Korean refugees in Jilin province almost one year later. The London journalist certainly did not believe that crossing the actual border would enhance her story, the same one that Laura/ Mitch/Euna were sent to Yanji and Dandong to cover. (They never made it to Dandong.)

    Please let us know if and when Lisa Ling replies to your response. Keep up the good work on your blog! Cheers!

  2. How boringly predictable are these Ling twins. Not even three months out of North Korea and they have already released a book, for goodness sake. I have argued before that these two muppet sisters don’t give a damn about NK and North Korean people. They’re only in it for their own vain ego’s and this stupid book exactly proves my point.

  3. @ Ernst: you should talk…are you just another example of the lemming like hypocrite who follows the leader of the democratic party by being “silent” re: death camps in North Korea?
    Can’t a former US president speak out for humanity, especially in light of the fact that the present one just gave a speech about “silence being the co-conspirator to evil” (Holocaust Memorial)?
    Is the political (democrats) party’s approach to the DPRK really about being silent about the death camps in return for nuclear weapons abandonment?!

  4. Ernst wrote:

    How boringly predictable are these Ling twins. Not even three months out of North Korea and they have already released a book, for goodness sake.

    Point of information: the timeline stretches a bit longer than that. Laura Ling and Euna Lee were released in early August, and though the Ling sisters apparently had a book deal offer a week later, there book was not announced until late last month and it won’t actually be released in hardcover until May 18.

    Also, they are not twins. They are sisters born three years apart (Lisa in 1973 and Laura in 1976).

  5. “Their foolishness in willfully crossing over into North Korea while carrying incriminating videotapes of the North Korean refugees hiding in China whom they interviewed, borders on the criminal. ”

    ————
    I thought I read somewhere that they destroyed these tapes before being caught? Someone please clarify. Do we know if anyone really died?

  6. biff wrote:

    I think Kushibo sounds a little too self-righteous in his fury. We can’t really measure the total impact of the events surrounding the Stupogants. Even if 10 were killed by their actions, if a 1000 were saved by their actions, does this remove the “blood on their hands” and make their acts somehow incredibly virtuous? You say, that’s ridiculous. Not necessarily. To paraphrase our VP, this story was a big frickin’ deal last year. While it certainly could have led the regime to crack down on certain border crossings, it could also have inspired others to help refugees, to donate to organizations that help, etc.

    Do you have any hard evidence, at least a report, of an increase in this kind of thing? It seems to me we’ve seen a lot of day traipsers instead, two from the US and (maybe) four from the ROK — five depending on how Mr Gomes is counted.

    And if we’re going in the direction of ripples of causation, why does the number of people “killed by their actions” stop at just ten while the number saved gets to reverberate to one thousand, including anyone anywhere who might possibly have been positively touched? With porous portions of the borders sealed up tighter in the wake of their capture and the Chinese suddenly in possession of hard data and hard justification for a roundup, that number could also be a lot higher than ten.

    Where is the evidence of a thousand lives being saved by these jaunts into North Korea?

  7. Theresa wrote:

    I thought I read somewhere that they destroyed these tapes before being caught? Someone please clarify. Do we know if anyone really died?

    Laura Ling and Euna Lee claimed in the Los Angeles Times that they had these things on their possession when they were in custody and they tried to destroy them at that time:

    After we were detained, the two of us made every effort to limit the repercussions of our arrest. In the early days of our confinement, before we were taken to Pyongyang, 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. During rigorous, daily interrogation sessions, we took care to protect our sources and interview subjects. We were also extremely careful not to reveal the names of our Chinese and Korean contacts, including Chun. People had put their lives at risk by sharing their stories, and we were determined to do everything in our power to safeguard them.

    I think this quote sounded very self-serving, as if to proactively answer a criticism that they know is coming but in truth they have no decent answer for. One wonders how many notes they can consume in the short time that they are out of view (assuming that they really had such a flimsy pat-down upon capture that they would still have substantial notes and videotapes on their person), and one also wonders how they “damaged” the videotapes. Undoubtedly their “damaged” videotapes were sent along to Pyongyang as well, where the technology would be there to reconstruct most of them — Scotchâ„¢ tape might be all it requires if someone has just unspooled the tape or ripped it a parts.

    I stand by what I said: “Their foolishness in willfully crossing over into North Korea while carrying incriminating videotapes of the North Korean refugees hiding in China whom they interviewed, borders on the criminal.”

  9. My point is that there is not hard evidence, but it is at least plausable. That’s all.

  10. From the comprehensive archives of Spelunker:

    “They didn’t cover the faces of the North Koreans they interviewed,” says Choi Song-jun, a Bible student who works for Durihana. “We really worry about it. We pray for them and for their relatives. Nobody knows what happens to them.”

    This quotation is from Donald Kirk’s article in the Christian Science Monitor on June 12, 2009:

    http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0417/p06s10-woap.html?page=1

  11. Thanks for that link, Spelunker. I’d forgotten about that CSM article. If I can find a place for it, I might add that link to what I wrote.

    I have sent Lisa Ling an email informing her that I finally put up my response. It is quite long and I’m sure that, if she decides to respond, she’ll want to show as much care in her response as I did in mine.