Clinton Welcomes North Korean “Trial” of U.S. Journalists

So North Korea is about to subject two American journalists to one of the world’s most opaque, arbitrary, and harsh judicial systems.  This would mark the first North Korean trial of an American in recent years, if ever.  And although our Secretary of State calls the charges “baseless,” she sounds just thrilled to pieces at the prospect of two of her country’s citizens facing a revolutionary tribunal:

At a press appearance with Malaysia’s foreign minister, Clinton cast the announcement as, potentially, good news. “Actually the trial date being set we view as a welcome time frame,” said Hillary Clinton. “We believe that the charges are baseless and should not have been brought, and that these two young women should be released immediately. But the fact that they are going to have some process we believe is a signal that there can be, and I hope will be, a resolution as soon as possible.” [Chosun Ilbo]

Speaking in Washington, Clinton told reporters she welcomed the quick trial date, saying “the fact that they are now going to have some process we believe is a signal that there can be, and I hope will be, a resolution as soon as possible.” She also repeated her view that the charges against the two are baseless and that they should be released.  [Reuters, Jon Herskovitz]

Wow, and to think we’re just days from justice being served!   Either that, or the sight of two emaciated and terrified young women reading scripted confessions that the CIA paid them to carry bubonic plague into Sinuiju.

The announcement, coming in the same week as Iran’s release of a U.S. reporter who had been convicted of spying, led to speculation that television reporters Laura Ling and Euna Lee might also be set free after trial as part of North Korea’s diplomatic gamesmanship with the United States. [Washington Post, Blaine Harden]

I’m certainly no expert on North Korean criminal procedure, but I’d venture that the North Korean Constitution is universally viewed as a “living, breathing” document. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons why a delegation of the holocaust-denying Stalinist tools progressive-minded legal scholars at the National Lawyers’ Guild visited Pyongyang in 2003 and were especially pleased to report (a) “finding” an actual North Korean law book, (b) that North Korea officially has no death penalty, and (c) a notable absence of hungry-looking people anywhere their minders led them.

Not all of those reports completely squared with the subsequent reports of North Korean refugees or the Korean Bar Association, however, and if the National Lawyers Guild ever remarked on this mass summary execution, or these, or the nearly 1,000 public executions said to have taken place in 2007 alone, I’d appreciate someone dropping a link into the comments.

I’d be even more obliged if anyone can explain how shilling for ruthless totalitarianism came to be regarded as “liberal.”

The credible evidence about North Korea’s judicial system suggests that it’s not so much a “system” as a loose hierarchical framework for the arbitrary exercise of life-and-death authority, and where necessary, terror.  And if the Supreme Arbitrary Authority wants “to hear the sound of gunfire,” that’s what the “system” will provide.

Which only leaves us to hope that the Supreme Arbitrary Authority wants Laura Ling and Euna Lee to eventually tell us all how well they were treated.  That is, aside from the injustice of weeks of terrifying interrogation and incommunicado detention for the “crime” of trying to report the truth.