Lisa Ling’s Husband Expresses Concern for Refugees; Mitch Koss, Laura Ling, and Euna Lee Remain Silent

The Wall Street Journal has published its own report on the scandal that is becoming a serious threat to (among other things) Laura Ling and Euna Lee’s public image as newsworthy victims. The Journal’s story adds fuel to suspicions that Ling, Lee, and producer Mitch Koss recklessly endangered the lives of refugees and activists by carrying video of them into North Korean territory, or otherwise failed to take measures to prevent that video from falling into Chinese and North Korean hands.

Paul Song, Laura Ling’s brother-in-law, speaking on behalf of the two journalists, on Sunday expressed his concern for the missionaries, human-rights workers and displaced North Koreans inside China. “The potential for increased crackdowns is a concern for all of us,” he said in a phone interview from Los Angeles.

Mr. Song stressed that Ms. Ling and Ms. Lee repeatedly took steps “to ensure the safety of all aid workers” both before and after their arrests. [WSJ, Gordon Fairclough and Jay Solomon]

You’ll see me quoted in the article as well; Solomon interviewed me last week. A point I stressed to Solomon but which didn’t make it into the final copy was that each risk must be weighed on its own merits. With perfect hindsight, it’s too easy and simplistic to say that no one should try to infiltrate past North Korean minders to bring us unofficial views of North Korea. I would emphatically disagree with such a proposition. Recently, some have criticized Lisa Ling’s undercover visit to North Korea with a team of eye surgeons, a criticism that wasn’t evident at the time her extraordinary documentary first aired. I strongly disagree with that criticism, and I defend Lisa Ling’s documentary because while it took substantial risks — mostly for Ms. Ling herself — the only North Koreans it endangered were her Bowibu minders. On the other hand, the result of Lisa Ling’s ruse was first-class journalism that drove home the cultish depravity, crushing poverty, and pervasive intimidation in which North Koreans must somehow survive. It informed the public by breathing life and authenticity into facts most viewers only knew vaguely. On balance, the information it provided us was worth the risks Ms. Ling took. I doubt it had much negative impact on other humanitarian operations in North Korea; after all, with the exception of trusted NGO’s like the Eugene Bell Foundation, which echoes the regime’s talking points in the American press, even to the detriment of the greater North Korean population, North Korea has never allowed many NGO’s in anyway, and probably only to help pre-selected loyal citizens with the right songbun. Around the time it seized Ling and Lee, North Korea ordered out all American NGO’s and rejected American food aid, almost certainly for unrelated political or diplomatic reasons.

Now contrast that with what Laura Ling and Euna Lee did. Of the risks, we’ve said plenty, and we eagerly await Ling and Lee’s side of it. But exactly what great hidden truth lay across that remote stretch of border? Video of huts and fields? I can’t imagine that these things were what enticed them to cross, and it’s why we need to hear much more about the Chinese guide who is widely rumored to have lured Ling, Lee, and Koss into crossing the border, whom the Chinese arrested last month, and whom they released shortly thereafter (see update). An obvious suspicion is that the guide is actually a North Korean agent who lured the three journalists into crossing just as Kim Jong Il was planning to launch an ICBM and test a nuke (and consequently, to test a new American president). This wouldn’t go very far to absolve Koss, Ling, or Lee, but it would dramatically alter the analysis of .

If true, this would be fairly characteristic behavior for the North Koreans (as would stretching the boundaries of what is “characteristic,” even for them). After all, North Korea has kidnapped dozens of people from Japan, South Korea, and other countries. It agents, whom the Chinese allow to operate on its territory to drag refugees back across the border, kidnapped the wheel-chair-bound U.S. lawful permanent resident Kim Dong Shik in 2000, dragged him across the border (almost certainly with China’s full knowledge and assent), tortured him to death, and () buried him in a shallow grave on a North Korean army base near Sinuiju. American protestations over Rev. Kim, including those from then-Senator Obama, proved to be as ephemeral as all other American protestations. What could be better than luring some reckless Americans into becoming their next hostages just as His Withering Majesty planned to provoke a global crisis? The arrest of the refugees would have been an unexpected bonus.

With all of that said, I’m conflicted because I’m glad Ling and Lee decided to cover this story to begin with, but also because of another fact you probably aren’t aware of. Paul Song, Lisa Ling’s husband, is a long-time supporter of the human rights of the North Korean people and flew all the way across the country two years ago to appear at a LiNK fundraiser. Ling and Lee probably undertook this story with the best of intentions. That may be why when Song asks us to keep our minds open, I’m willing to oblige to some degree. But if there’s any truth to this story at all, Ling and Lee need to speak out — promptly and vocally — for the refugees whose faces appear in those videos. Public pressure probably won’t change the way North Korea treats those in its prisons, but it could stop the Chinese from shipping North Koreans to its gulags, and it might force China to suspend bounty payments for North Korean refugees, or to restrict the actions of the North Korean agents who operate on its territory with China’s assent.

Song’s statement is a welcome expression of concern, but it doesn’t begin to put the kind of pressure on China that will be needed to stop China from jabbing wires though the noses of North Korean refugees, stringing them together, and dragging them back across the North Korean border to be tortured to death or shot in front of their neighbors:

China’s brutal and inhuman practices flagrantly violate the 1951 Convention on Refugees and its 1968 Protocol, both of which China signed. Our dismay with the actions of Ling, Lee, and Koss, shouldn’t cause us to lost sight of the fact that the real murderers here are Kim Jong Il and his Bowibu, and that China’s fascist dictatorship is both the accessory to and enabler of every atrocity that happens in North Korea today.