Laura Ling and Euna Lee Speak

Here are the paragraphs that answer the biggest question — where were they captured? Jodi had heard they were in North Korea. I had heard that they were in China. I’d assumed that we couldn’t both be right, but as it turns out, we both were:

When we set out, we had no intention of leaving China, but when our guide beckoned for us to follow him beyond the middle of the river, we did, eventually arriving at the riverbank on the North Korean side. He pointed out a small village in the distance where he told us that North Koreans waited in safe houses to be smuggled into China via a well-established network that has escorted tens of thousands across the porous border.

Feeling nervous about where we were, we quickly turned back toward China. Midway across the ice, we heard yelling. We looked back and saw two North Korean soldiers with rifles running toward us. Instinctively, we ran.

We were firmly back inside China when the soldiers apprehended us. Producer Mitch Koss and our guide were both able to outrun the border guards. We were not. We tried with all our might to cling to bushes, ground, anything that would keep us on Chinese soil, but we were no match for the determined soldiers. They violently dragged us back across the ice to North Korea and marched us to a nearby army base, where we were detained. [L.A. Times]

Technically speaking, this might qualify as an international abduction; as it turns out, however, the law isn’t very clear as to whether there is a right of international hot pursuit (the argument weakens in the context of two young women who present no legitimate threat to anyone’s safety). Ling and Lee’s decision to cross the border would be a mitigating factor, except that they should have been released immediately after the circumstances became apparent to Kim Jong Il, and the additional circumstantial evidence that they were lured by a man who must have been a North Korean agent:

In the days before our capture, our guide had seemed cautious and responsible; he was as concerned as we were about protecting our interview subjects and not taking unnecessary risks. That is in part why we made the decision to follow him across the river.

We didn’t spend more than a minute on North Korean soil before turning back, but it is a minute we deeply regret. To this day, we still don’t know if we were lured into a trap. In retrospect, the guide behaved oddly, changing our starting point on the river at the last moment and donning a Chinese police overcoat for the crossing, measures we assumed were security precautions. But it was ultimately our decision to follow him, and we continue to pay for that decision today with dark memories of our captivity.

Ling and Lee claim that they only filmed the face of one defector, in profile. They also claim that they attempted to damage videotapes and swallow papers after their capture. That suggests that they did in fact carry their tapes into North Korea, which is just inexplicable to me, but I do believe they’re sincere when they say this:

At the same time, though, we do not want our story to overshadow the critical plight of these desperate defectors.

Since our release, we have become aware that the situation along the China-North Korea border has become even more challenging for aid groups and that many defectors are going deeper underground. We regret if any of our actions, including the high-profile nature of our confinement, has led to increased scrutiny of activists and North Koreans living along the border. The activists’ work is inspiring, courageous and crucial. [….]

We know that people would like to hear more about our experience in captivity. But what we have shared here is all we are prepared to talk about — the psychological wounds of imprisonment are slow to heal. Instead, we would rather redirect this interest to the story we went to report on, a story about despairing North Korean defectors who flee to China only to find themselves living a different kind of horror. We hope that now, more than ever, the plight of these people and of the aid groups helping them are not forgotten.

So does this change my views? To a degree, yes, although I’m still deeply conflicted about this. The circumstances suggest that they were lured, that their crossing was brief and quickly reconsidered, and that the North Koreans crossed the border to grab them anyway. That doesn’t absolve Ling and Lee of some very poor judgment, which they admit. But their regret for having done what they did seems sincere, and if they briefly forgot whose story they were there to tell, they seem to remember now.