In the Absence of Facts, Rumor Overtakes the Injustice of Laura Ling and Euna Lee’s Captivity
I guess I wasn’t the only one who thought of Laura Ling and Euna Lee when I heard about the escape of David Rhode from the Taliban. An unpleasant quirk of human nature occurred to me: by virtue of his escape, Rohde had instantly transformed himself from “stupid” to intrepid. I’m glad Rohde lived to bring the story home. Oddly enough, the minute I heard the report on the radio, I remembered Rohde’s name, because being captured isn’t a new experience for him. Long ago, I was as interested in events in Bosnia as I am in North Korea today. Rohde, then reporting for the Christian Science Monitor, infiltrated through Serbian lines alone to verify reports of a massacre at Srebrenica. He found it. He also found the Serbs, who took him prisoner. But Rohde also provided some of the first and best confirmation that something truly horrible had taken place at Srebrenica, leading to a forceful NATO intervention that supplanted a feckless U.N. and ended the slaughter.
Laura Ling and Euna Lee, by virtue of their very captivity, are also bringing much needed attention to a great and underreported humanitarian crisis. Ironically, no report they could have provided would likely have brought the North Korean regime such infamy. Yet more reports seem to suggest that they intentionally took a big risk in the course of their reporting, perhaps to bring attention to their fledgling organization. Here is the latest of those:
It took just under three months, but we finally have the first reliable confirmation that Laura Ling, Euna Lee, Mitchell Koss and guide Kim Seong-chol did indeed cross into North Korean territory on that fateful March morning. Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg told Congresswoman Jane Harman (D-Venice) during a June 12th phone conversation that the U.S. government has established that the quartet did step across the border, although it is unclear ““ after being chased and captured by North Korean border guards ““ whether those border guards entered Chinese territory to effect the capture of the two journalists. The entire episode occurred within “a few dozen meters” of the North Korea ““ China border. [Liberate Laura Blog]
This post goes on to speculate that Ling and Lee were either lured or driven across the border by North Korean guards. The basis for that speculation is that Ling, Lee and Koss were too smart to have crossed the border intentionally, but the jury is still out on that. Obviously, we need to know what Mitch Koss knows, but Koss isn’t talking.
This is still hearsay within hearsay, but if it’s true, it would be just the latest example of how too many in the media completely fail to understand North Korea, and how truly different its pathology is from any other place on earth. That — and North Korea’s past practice of luring people into abduction — also tell us that it’s reasonable to speculate that North Korea might have lured Ling and Lee to a prearranged place. There’s just no solid evidence to support that yet. Neocon conspiracy theory? Not necessarily:
Another possibility, which I incline to, is that Ling and Lee may have been sold to North Korea by a local guide. If the guide said that it was safe to cross, or that they were still on Chinese territory, they would have believed him. Moreover, by some accounts they were working on a story about human trafficking — there’s a good deal of trafficking of North Korean women and girls into China, into prostitution and to be wives of peasants — and the traffickers could well have tricked them in exchange for a reward from North Korea. [Nicholas Kristof Blog, N.Y. Times]
I tend to agree with Kristof that Ling and Lee could not have crossed the border without knowing it. Indeed, I find nothing to disagree with in Kristof’s entire post, which is a rare thing. I am surprised, however, at the amount of cross-border reporting that Kristof describes:
That said, people often do cross over deliberately, just inside the border, and there are usually no consequences at all. In 1997, a Times correspondent based in China, Seth Faison, stepped across stones in the Yalu River (a different part of the border with China) to reach a North Korean island.
In the end, no matter what Ling and Lee did, there is no justification for North Korea’s captivity of these women, and the State Department has again called for their release. The North Koreans have also allowed another visit from the Swedish Embassy. Another vigil for Ling and Lee is also being planned.
There should be no ransom, and no propaganda gift to the North Koreans, who must instead be made to understand that holding Ms. Ling and Ms. Lee will mean severe financial consequences, and more of the intensely adverse publicity they seek to deter with this unjust punishment.
Well one thing is for sure. When/if they are released, they’ll have the biggest story of the year, I’m sure.
I believe the entire border is distinguished by the two rivers. Even at narrow points, the river is still a river, not some drainage ditch. If the two women crossed voluntarily, then they knew where they were going.
What adverse publicity? Does the North Korean government really care about international condemnation of its imprisonment of the two journalists? To the contrary, I expect the North Koreans will tactically release video footage in the near future when they feel the need to grab headlines again.
I’m about at the point of dejection and tuning off on this item.
I haven’t been looking around extensively on the issue, but the bulk of what I’m seeing all around is focused on this one moment in the event to the exclusion of pretty much everything else – as if where they were we they were taken makes all the difference in the world.
And we are so far into the event now – I don’t see it reversing… or how it will…
As far as I can tell now, the two will be held at the whim of Pyongyang. Period…
The outside world is too fractured and pre-occupied and not focusing on this in a way that will help get them free…at least that’s how I see the thing in total…
I agree that the North Koreans often do things that seem calculated to piss us off, which is in some tension with North Korea’s obsessive and aggressive defense of its own image. I also think that public anger in this country won’t have reached a sufficient level until it causes us to put pressure on our own politicians, too many of whom defer to the State Department and resist attaching painful consequences to North Korea’s actions.
It does in some ways – and it is hard to accurately describe how or where – but part of it is national image and part of it is worrying about how it influences China and to a much lesser extend Russia.
Pyongyang learned a big lesson about this when it came clean and finally officially admitted it had kidnapped Japanese citizens over the years. Before that moment, NK had reason to believe the Japanese government was just at the threshold of giving it major concessions in order to “normalize” relations, and part of that had been the Japanese government insisting on Pyongyang admitting what everyone pretty much knew to be true to begin with…
…but perhaps both NK and Tokyo didn’t understand the mood of Japanese society and how the official word on the kidnappings would hit them. It exploded and completely derailed the path the bilateral relationship had been on up to that point, and the relationship hasn’t come close to returning to that (rather naive) level of the Japanese portion of the Sunshine policy that got destroyed by such a major shift in public opinion.
NK has also had to watch and try to play on public opinion in South Korea over the years.
And most importantly for it, it has to watch public opinion in China and the US/Western democracies:
In my opinion, it is clear NK didn’t shoot up a 2nd ICBM between 1998 and whenever the 2nd was launched — because Pyongyang believed it could not afford to paint China into a corner in China’s relations with the US and other key trading partners. The more provocative NK acts, the more (at times) heat it puts on China’s key support of the regime.
But, the US imposed the banking sanctions that really cut into the North’s ability to survive, and that made it easier for NK to forget about pissing China off and made shooting up another ICBM a no-lose situation because they were in trouble to begin with.
The point of all that here is — NK does gauge China’s position vis a vis the US and Japan and EU.
If the US had come out very strong against the latest provocations as well as with the two reporters, it could have put pressure on China which would lead to China putting pressure on Pyongyang — which is the only way we’re going to make headway on any issues we want to deal with the North – nukes, nuke programs, ICBMs, proliferation, whatever…
But — we’ve seen nothing.
Obama has made some noise about moving in a harder-line direction due to the big provocations, but the rhetoric has been low key and nothing has been done yet…
…which means Pyongyang just sits comfortably and Beijing is free to be indifferent or even obstructive in the UN.
And the reaction or lack of one to the plight of these two reporters is just one part of this.
In short, there is no momentum. NK is waiting and calculating on what it wants to do next. And we have nothing showing….
I have the feeling today that it might just be better to stop paying attention, because I don’t see the players involved as heading in any productive direction…
…..I guess I’ll have to wait around until NK finds a way to up the ante enough to make the world really pay attention…..
….and based on the cards they have already used up…..I shudder to think what that might take….
The bottom line, in relation to Sonagi’s quote, if Obama and the US wanted to, we could make the North care about the heat we could turn up over these two reporters, because we could do enough to make China care about it, especially with all the other recent provocations, and we could make Pyongyang uncomfortable through Beijing.
But we clearly don’t want to go that route, and it is getting a little too late.
……..the ball is back in NK’s court all the way around, unless Obama surprises us….and we’ll just have to see what Pyongyang comes up with next…
I’m just curious to see what the many Korea watchers here think on this:
What chance would you give it that Pyongyang will hold onto these two women indefinitely – for years?
Right now, based on the totality of everything I’ve seen — I’d give it as high as 50/50…
I also seem to have a comment hung in the system….not sure why…it had no links…
First of all, I would like to present my expertise on the China-North Korea border. I have conducted 3 infiltrations, all successful, from 2002-2005 with one penetrating deep into the outskirts of a remote village. Therefore I am highly qualified to address issues involving sentries, patrols, and boundary locations.
The place where Seth Faison stepped across stones onto North Korean territory is north of Dandong next to the Hushan reconstructed Great Wall. This is a popular sightseeing destination in Dandong named “Yi Bu Kua” （一æ¥è·¨ï¼‰and many tourists have taken the great leap forward from China and hasty retreat back from North Korean territory. This place was also the site of my first infiltration, though I crossed at a point approximately 50 yards further upstream when it was frozen.
A common misperception is that the middle of the Yalu and Tumen Rivers is the international boundary’s demarcation line between North Korea and China. Most people don’t know, including the majority of China’s citizens, that there are certain plots of land near China’s shore of the Yalu and Tumen that officially belong to North Korea. This is a little known fact that the government of China doesn’t like to admit even though it’s their own fault for practically giving them away during concessions to Pyongyang in 1963.
Therefore when observing the actual boundary it is absolutely necessary to have accurate maps (geographic ratio scale around 1: 400,000) indicating where these plots of land exist, because they are only separated from China by a narrow stream or tributary. These maps are actually not hard to find, and can be purchased at most bookstores in China that sell Liaoning and Jilin provincial atlas paperbacks for around 20 yuan.
My other two infiltrations were at one of these plots of land south of Dandong. The North Korean plot I visited is not a tourist destination and few Chinese people outside of Dandong know about it. Both times I went disguised as a Chinese soldier in the middle of winter and interacted with a North Korean sentry. There were no Chinese border guards the first time I went there and during the second attempt I was actually assisted by a sole Chinese sentry who gave me a ride in his jeep closer to the actual border! You may have numerous questions at this point but the reason I wore the PLA uniform was to camouflage myself for the pursuit of “birdwatching”. The Chinese border guard bought my story hook, line, and sinker. A while later the North Korean border sentry happily accepted my frisbee (he didn’t know he was supposed to throw it back) as well as the American baseball cards and South Korean provisions that I gave him in a Christmas gift bag. This was a professional reconnaissance mission that I would hesitate to try again today.
Anyway, the point I’m making is that although I do not have experience crossing the Tumen in Jilin province, I do know from maps that there are parts of the river there where North Korean land is closer to China than one might be initially inclined to believe. Chinese Tumen River area maps I’ve seen sometimes don’t even label which tiny islands are Chinese and which belong to North Korea, therefore what may have seemed like a small step for Current TV’s crew could have been a giant leap for North Korea and the lucky border guards who happened to be there on the morning of March 17.
Just a quick note — I’m serious about wanting to see what others think, in terms of percentages, about the chance of these women being held long-term vs a release in the near future.
There are many people who read this site who have diverse experience with Korea (North and South) and issues related to it. Readership has shown itself to be wide ranging. I’d like to see what gut feeling others coming from different perspectives have on this particular question.
For myself, honestly, at this moment, I give it a majority chance that NK will keep these two women long term. I could easily be wrong, but that is the sense I have now. I can’t feel confident how high above 50% I’d give it, but I do think it is more likely than less. At least 51%+…
usinkorea, I give it a better than 80% chance they’ll be home by New Year’s.
I’m staying with my August 10 prediction. Both husbands got phone calls Sunday and told reporters at today’s vigils that their wives need medical attention. Laura’s ulcer is getting worse and now Euna has a medical problem as well.
NK cannot afford the hotel costs of keeping these two journalists. They will be released by the end of the year.
One problem I have is that – with my Pyongyang-type thinking cap on – I can’t figure out a compelling reason to let them go…
“Both times I went disguised as a Chinese soldier in the middle of winter and interacted with a North Korean sentry.”
So what language did you speak?
I’m actually with usinkorea on this one – there’s no reason to let them go and I’m becoming increasingly pessimistic. I hope I’m wrong. But there is one important reason to not let them go… especially if they want to teach errant journalists reporting about the trafficking in the area a quite punitive lesson. With the facts that we know, I see this incident more along the lines of the Kim Dong Shik abduction rather than the Hunziker crossing.
I’d say 50/50 as well.
The real question then is if they’ll see the inside of a kyo-hwa-so. More unlikely on that front, unless P’yang is really serious about treating this case as an example.
Sure they took a big risk if they did it intentionally, but also a very brave thing. I am on the pessimistic side, and think they will be inprisoned in North Korea for awhile.
They did a brave thing IF they had a clear goal of getting new and important information and weren’t just looking to get some footage and IF they weren’t carrying sensitive information like recordings of interviews with refugees and their helpers.
Forgot to close the boldface bracket after “information” in the previous post.
“A common misperception is that the middle of the Yalu and Tumen Rivers is the international boundary’s demarcation line between North Korea and China. Most people don’t know, including the majority of China’s citizens, that there are certain plots of land near China’s shore of the Yalu and Tumen that officially belong to North Korea. “
Chinese netizens posting satellite images are aware of this, and I expect the guide would be, too.
I don’t believe the March 2009 Current TV assignment in China was going to have anything much different than what was already reported in National Geographic’s February 2009 issue. I would say interviewing North Korean refugees in Yanji was already brave enough, if you enjoy using that word. What they did on the border borders on naive and stupid. Of course I intentionally crossed the boundary 3 times and didn’t get caught by North Korean or Chinese border guards, but I was very well prepared for all three missions.
I am fluent in Mandarin and tried speaking Chinese with the North Korean sentry but he didn’t understand a word. Fortunately I also brought along ‘Barron’s Korean At A Glance” phrase book & dictionary (only $8.95!) and had picked up some North Korean vocabulary in Lonely Planet’s Korea guide book. So I addressed him as “tongmu” (comrade) and said “yagu” when giving him the baseball cards. I had a few other words and phrases handy if needed, as well as the lyrics to “Arirang” (page 273).
Satellite images may show the small islands near the river’s shore but a detailed atlas is still needed to know which ones belong to China (ä¸) and which are officially the territory of North Korea (æœ). I have encountered plenty of Chinese netizens who are completely unaware of the fact that North Korea owns Yu Chi Island near Dandong and that other plots of land near China’s shore were given away in 1963. It’s a part of Chinese history that the government in Beijing doesn’t like to discuss; a little secret tucked away in the dark annals of 1960’s regrets.
If Laura or Euna gets too sick there’s a good chance they’ll be let go sooner, but still not without a price. I’m not a doctor but after a brief glance on the internet now believe Laura’s ulcer might be something that sets her free if Pyongyang can’t treat it promptly:
http://www.healthscout.com/ency/68/119/main.html
“If a person does not receive treatment for ulcers, it could lead to a bleeding ulcer (the ulcer has eaten into blood vessels and the blood has seeped into the digestive tract), a perforated ulcer (the ulcer has eaten a hole in the wall of the stomach or duodenum and bacteria and partially digested food has spilled into the hole, causing inflammation) or a narrowing and obstruction of the intestinal opening preventing food from leaving the stomach and entering the small intestine. If medication is ineffective or complications arise, surgery may be required.”
You may have numerous questions at this point but the reason I wore the PLA uniform was to camouflage myself for the pursuit of “birdwatchingâ€. The Chinese border guard bought my story hook, line, and sinker.
Wearing a PLA uniform to cross the border and check out some birds? Hmmm. Which species of birds are found only on the North Korean side of the border? Do these birds have accurate maps and know which islands belong to ä¸ and which ones belong to æœ? How did you manage to get a rifle to authenticate your uniform or did you open the phrasebook and point to the words “나는 ë§ë£¨ì— 소ì´ì„ 남겨 ë‘ê³ ì™”ì–´ìš””?
The area where I infiltrated is near a nationally recognized wetlands nature reserve. I had on PLA pants, overcoat, and hat with full military insignia in order to disguise myself as a PLA soldier when seen from a distance by North Korean sentries. When approached by China’s border sentry, my excuse for wearing the uniform was to camouflage myself for a lovely morning of birdwatching, thus not having to further explain why I was carrying binoculars and a long range camera lens as well. The sentry was so impressed with my knowledge of Chinese waterfowl that he drove me in his jeep to where he had recently spotted a Chinese egret. Imagine my delight as I was taken even closer to the North Korea border and dropped off with a kind wave goodbye!
Of course I am not a real birdwatcher but I did my homework before visiting this area and was confident of how much I could get away with if I was prepared with impressive knowledge. The scheme worked so brilliantly I went back and did it a second time at the same place. Amicable local farmers were impressed with me as well, and it was in the home of one hospitable older gentleman that the secrets of 1963 were revealed to me in casual conversation.
Do these 007 stories ever get you laid?
There seems to be roughly two camps of thought on North Korea’s intentions – both largely left undefined or semi-clear: 1. North Korea just wants to make a quick buck but doesn’t really won’t to be held responsible for this brouhaha and is either itching to return them and be done with it or would simply like to have the situation resolved as quickly as possible with a pay off.
2. My opposite feeling that it is just as likely or more likely that the North has the women and plans on keeping them on hand to satisfy its own whim whenever it feels like it years into the future — that it might give them up if the price is right but it will be quiet satisfied to hang onto them as long as they aren’t forced to give them up.
I think this difference in base assumptions also explains differences in points of view on the importance of where the women were actually taken and how much or little the US government should get involved.
If I thought the two women were most assuredly going to be released in at least a matter of months if not weeks, and that North Korea wouldn’t dare do anything drastic with them considering they are going to be out of pocket in the near future and can tell their tale to the whole world — I wouldn’t worry so much about them —- and I’d probably think the US silence at least could make some sense and I might think more about specific points in the whole ordeal like where they were nabbed.
Especially on the US government indifference part — why give NK the satisfaction of showing you care if the whole issue is highly likely to be solved in a matter of weeks with a quiet payoff of a couple of million by some non-government entity?
I guess that is my best hope for the future now since the US government is following that route of virtual indifference —- but when I think about Pyongyang’s mindset – I can’t help but thing that is just one possibility and probably not the most likely one at all…
I think it is easier to rattle off a few likely reasons why Pyongyang would want to hold them and only on at play right now for why it would let them go:
It’d let them go to get paid off with the right amount.
It would hold them to send a message. Or as a vendetta for what the sister did. Or just because it is a sadistic, megalomaniacal regime that does things like this!!
Everything all of us know about the regime in Pyongyang is that it has been a sadistic, evil place that has done things to its very own people that don’t make any sense at all out in the rational world where people have hearts as well as brains…
Looking back at North Korea’s long history of seemingly bizarre and negative actions — why do so many people have faith Pyongyang basically wants to return these two American reporters just as soon as it can get a little money for them?
It is very possible that is exactly what is going on —- but I can’t have any confidence in it based on what we know as fact in history…
A quick example:
We all know the regime in North Korea is so paranoid about its “survival” that from an early point in its history, it created “classes” or classifications of all the citizens – based on perceived loyalty to the state – with elaborate plans to kill the lower classes if war with the US should erupt.
And that these bottom layers of loyalty are the ones that were purposefully starved off during the famine and since and that ends up in the concentration camps.
In short, we know NK has killed off millions of its own people because it thought it just couldn’t trust them enough…
In fact, we know that the Koreans from Japan who were very loyal to the regime to the point that they came back and gave their wealth to the state — ended up in the concentration camps because the regime just didn’t like to take any chance they might lead to its downfall.
—- How hard or easy would it be for such a regime to decide that two American reporters trying to do one of those stories that makes North Korea the talk of the human rights circuit (well, not really that much, judging by Amnesty Int’s websites – but we’re talking about a paranoid regime here) and makes it harder for NK to get its demands met — are really a national security threat that needs to be dealt with – in the worst possible terms?
Amnesty has put together a Google ad to publicize the journalists’ detention. It can be seen at TMH.
Out of curiosity I clicked on the Laura Ling and Euna Lee Amnesty ad, expecting a pitch for a donation. Instead I was taken to a page with an email, apparently to the government of the People’s Republic of China. The email included no specific addressee. The form asked for the sender’s full name, address, and email address, information that could added to email and mailing lists that Amnesty could use for future fundraising appeals or sell to other organizations.
I repeated my prediction on June 25 that Laura and Euna would be released on August 10, as you can see from my above post. I made that original prediction some time after their trial, but I can’t find it in the archives. Maybe it’s at ROK Drop.
Anyway, Bill Clinton is in Pyongyang now finalizing negotiations for their release, so the lucky date should be within 5 days of the prediction I made back in June.
It’s been fun posting here on “One Free Korea”. I really like this intelligent blog and promise to be a regular reader even after Laura and Euna are released. Thanks to Joshua (no relation to William) Stanton and all of the people who make this site such a unique wonderful resource for Korea analysts.
Kam sa ham ni da!