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.
Joshua wrote:
Wasn’t this “rumor” from a time when people were incredulous that three Americans would be so stupid as to try to walk across the border on their own — back when many assumed they were kidnapped from the Chinese side? Now that we know they willfully and purposefully did cross into North Korean on their own accord, this “lured by a North Korean agent” doesn’t fit the paradigm so well.
I guess what I’m saying is that their own stupogance (in particular, wishing to get a “scoop” by showing themselves crossing in and out of North Korea) explains their behavior perfectly.
North Korea is always involved in some sort of machination, with our without using virtual hostages as cover, so their capture was mere dumb luck for Pyongyang.
Anyway, I do appreciate you taking the time to lay out what we have seen from Laura Ling’s side, even if it’s not coming from her directly. I did not know this stuff you wrote about Paul Song, so I appreciate it a great deal, not that it absolves Laura Ling, Euna Lee, and Mitch Koss.
And it’s good that you bring up that there are “good” ways in which “infiltrating” North Korea can be done. What Lisa Ling did — something I have not yet seen but only heard about — appears to have been something of value, so it’s wrong to say that any attempt by journalists to get into the DPRK is worthless, too dangerous to be of value, etc., etc. Someone has to do it, but what the Koss, Ling, and Lee team did was of no such value (I have called it professional aggrandizement and the post-release behavior of the Ling sisters seems to support that view).
Radio Free Asia now reports that Mitch Koss was indeed standing on China’s side of the border filming his female colleagues before Laura Ling and Euna Lee were arrested on North Korean territory. This supports the theory that Laura and Euna crossed onto a sandbar belonging to North Korea in close proximity to China’s shore of the Tumen River, which could have been done on a whim though we await the forthcoming truth from Laura’s editorial this week.
The RFA article also reports that the objective on March 17 was only to gather border area footage, a task that could have been safely done in Dandong where Curent TV’s crew was scheduled to go on that fateful day.
http://www.rfa.org/english/news/korea/ChinaSeizedDefectorFootage-08242009094102.html
SEOUL—Authorities in northeast China seized video footage shot by two U.S. journalists who were arrested by North Korea while investigating the plight of North Korean defectors in China, human rights workers said.
According to the North Korea Freedom Coalition, a cameraman working with Current TV journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling was still on the Chinese side of the border when the two women were arrested, and the footage he carried is now in the possession of Chinese authorities.
North Korea Freedom Coalition Chairman Suzanne Scholte said that when Lee and Ling were arrested March 17, videotape was confiscated from their cameraman (Mitch Koss) by Chinese police and used to identify North Korean defectors.
Ling and Lee, who had admitted violating North Korean law in an attempt to shoot television footage, were pardoned and flew home in early August after a personal visit to Pyongyang by former U.S. President Bill Clinton.
Rev. Lee Chan-woo said that Current TV cameraman Mitch Koss had videotapes in his possession of Lee’s orphanage when he was detained by public security bureau officials on the Chinese side of the border on March 17, and that police had told him during interrogation that they had seized them.
He said that in addition to covering his orphanage, the two reporters had also covered North Korean women defectors offering online sexual services via video chat. Such footage could result in more security crackdowns for North Korean defectors in China, said Rev. Lee, who paid a U.S. $3,200 fine before being deported.
One possible angle is that the Chinese cops simply lied when they told Lee that they had tapes, or useful information on the tapes. It’s a common ploy which serves both to weaken the prisoner’s defenses, and hide the true source of information, such as an informant or an agent. It also helps break up organizations by planting suspicion on various members.
Hearing the whole story from all of the participants would help though.
Spelunker wrote:
While I could see them wanting to get footage of an isolated part of the border, I don’t see the purpose of doing so at night, when what they would capture on film would look like Juche hour.
I wonder if Mitch Koss never went over to the North Korean side or if he just had successfully made it back to the Chinese side. If he were far enough from the women to tape them in the North Korean village they encountered, then the latter is as possible as the former.
They went after dawn, around 06:00 according to reports I have commented on previously. Richard breaks it down on his LiberateLaura blog with his “CSI Yanji” post.
http://liberatelaura.wordpress.com/2009/08/16/c-s-i-yanji/
They didn’t go to a North Korean village. I debunked that long ago as well. Perhaps you are referring to the incorrect “courtyard” translation from the initial English media accounts of the post-trial report. The Korean and Chinese versions say “territory”, not courtyard.
The point of crossing involves a sandbar on the Tumen River near Yueqing that North Korea claims as its own territory. That’s why Mitch could stand on the safety of China’s shoreline and film the girls stepping onto North Korean territory. The local guide must be given credit for bringing Current TV’s crew to that specific spot. I don’t believe Current TV did their homework with detailed maps of the Tumen River border area and chose this particular place all by themselves. My conclusion is that this border crossing stunt was done on a whim, almost as silly as something you would see on one of MTV’s shows instead of Current TV. I’m trying to remember the name of such a show; it begins with the letter “J”…
I can’t wait to hear Laura’s explanation of why they did it.
Thanks for clarifying that, Spelunker, as I had forgotten about that explanation of their activities (both the time and the location).
If the North Koreans claim that as their territory and the Chinese allow them to arrest people who enter it, that sounds pretty much like China is acquiescing to that claim. Unlike, say, Tokto/Takeshima, an isolated set of islets surrounded by rough seas far from undisputed territories, where Japan’s failure to block Korea’s effective control by no means is seen as acquiescence, we’re talking about a sand bar in the middle of a river close enough to walk to.
Do you have a Google Maps link or some such to the location of this sand bar?
And did I miss an alternate explanation for the reports that Laura Ling and Euna Lee were wearing North Korean peasant garb, or was that also a mistranslation of the Chinese, which clearly described them as wearing Madonna-inspired clothing circa “Holiday”?
The link I provided above also includes a link to the Google satellite map. It is located near Mapai village. I will post it for you here:
http://travelingluck.com/Asia/China/Jilin/_2033276_Mapai.html#local_map
I have not seen a single report mentioning that Laura and Euna were dressed as North Korean peasants. Can anybody even tell me what “North Korean peasant garb” looks like? How could it possibly be inspired by anything Madonna has ever worn? That makes absolutely no sense to me, as such a scenario (trying to look like North Korean refugees) might end up with them getting shot at by North Korean border sentries.
The best disguise for North Korea border infiltration is Chinese military winter clothing. The standard green PLA overcoat and “Lei Feng” hat (including PLA insignia) with cheap Chinese sunglasses ensures that you won’t stand out as a foreigner on either side. These items are easy to procure in Beijing, Shenyang, Dandong, and other northeastern China cities.
When I was finally spotted by a North Korean sentry near his post, he let me turn around and walk back to the China border without pursuit; in fact he even stood there waving goodbye to me!
There’s a rumor floating around the internet that Laura’s got some editorial that will be published this week.
It’s not a rumor; it’s a direct quotation from Lisa Ling’s husband (Paul Song). Didn’t you read the WSJ article linked in this post?
Mr. Song said he couldn’t comment on exactly what videos, notes or phone numbers may have been seized by North Korean or Chinese security agents from Ms. Ling, Ms. Lee or Mr. Koss. He said the two women would be running an editorial this week that will detail the circumstances surrounding their arrest and detention.
I’ve heard that rumor, too, and from someone I trust. The one detail I was told — and I gave my word to keep it to myself — may be surprising to some, perplexing to others.
Top 10 details that would surprise Spelunker:
10. The idea for Current TV’s crew to cross the border was actually Michael Jackson’s.
9. Laura Ling picked up the souvenir stone as a bet with her Yanji hotel foot massager.
8. Laura and Euna were CIA decoys, the real spies crossed the border further upstream!
7. Mitch Koss was actually Selig Harrison in disguise as a Current TV cameraman!
6. One of the items Laura had delivered to Pyongyang was a Domino’s pizza from Seoul.
5. Upon hearing Euna is a video editor, Kim Jong-il asked her to edit his biodocumentary.
4. The Korean word for “hard labor” is a homonym with “hot sauce”; it was all a joke!
3. Laura and Euna plan to revisit Pyongyang using their extended stay reward points.
2. The North Korean version of Laura and Euna’s story goes on sale Friday at “Borders”
1. Laura and Euna are going to be making their first interview debut this Friday night on David Letterman following “stupid pet tricks” and a guest appearance by Michael Vick.
I still don’t understand why Mitch Koss is waiting for Laura Ling and Euna Lee to tell their stories. Couldn’t he have told his story as soon as they got home? Can’t he tell it now?
I don’t think Current is letting anyone tell or publish anything that isn’t approved. NOt if they want to stay employed. I understand that Lisa’s been rather critical about Current’s actions.
The possibility that their Korean guide was actually a spy who lured them there is still plausible, I agree. And if so, perhaps the same “guide” also gave away the locations of refugees to Chinese authorities. Not that it doesn’t make their venture any less unsmart, but if the North Korean border guards were already waiting for them, then it’s not too much of a stretch to assume that the locations of refugee hideouts were already compromised as well. The theory xyzzy brought up about the Chinese cops lying to get what they want is also plausible, and I would also say that it isn’t improbable that Ling and Lee might have given up the whereabouts of refugees and locations during their interrogations (while I’m certain they weren’t physically beaten or waterboarded, I doubt they were treated with kid gloves, either).
But if the recorded evidence Mitch Koss had on him really was used to round up refugees, then I think he’s the main guilty party here and not Ling and Lee (it’s also telling that he ran away like a chump when they were both getting arrested).
What’s more, I think some of the negative/critical online comments about Ling and Lee over this have been malicious and cruel, particularly because those same commenters would think differently it were a female relative of theirs who had been in the same situation. But I do agree with kushibo that Euna Lee isn’t really to blame in this.
And I take issue with people saying that Ling and Lee “illegally.” I find this ridiculous since North Korea is an illegal state in itself, especially if turns out they were arrested on a sandbar that North Korea only claims and not physically across the actual border. The North Korean position on the matter deserves no sympathy.
But either way, let’s see what Laura Ling has to say in her upcoming op ed.
it=if it, sorry
And I take issue with people saying that Ling and Lee “illegally”=And I take issue with people saying that Ling and Lee entered North Korea “illegally”, duh
it’s also telling that he ran away like a chump when they were both getting arrested
Koss was detained by Chinese police, and besides, even if he wasn’t, running away would be a smarter choice over fighting with armed border guards.
And I take issue with people saying that Ling and Lee “illegally.†I find this ridiculous since North Korea is an illegal state in itself,
Is it? How so? However heinous the North Korean regime is, the country holds a seat in the UN and its sovereignty is recognized by most other nations.
especially if turns out they were arrested on a sandbar that North Korea only claims and not physically across the actual border.
Disputed territorial claims are found the world over. I suspect any foreign nationals landing on Dokdo would be promptly arrested by the ROK navy.
Your phrase “China jabbing wires though the noses of North Korean refugees” is sourced to a fabulously written and emotionally subtle piece of reportage the NYT originally printed by Michael Paterniti based upon a few days he spent hanging out with NK defector late teens in Seoul in early 2003.
It’s an absolutely great article and I appreciate your linking it (and everything else on this prodigious blog, for that matter).
However, just for accuracy, I think you are incorrect in using that particular NYT article as the basis for asserting that North Korean refugees are strung through the nose with wires in China before they go back to North Korea. Here is the small excerpt from the article on which you appear to be basing your assertion:
As lucky as Heo and his housemates said they were to be here, they clearly hadn’t yet escaped the specter of the recent past. Living life on the lam in China had been its own discombobulation. They had no schooling or structure to their lives, except maybe fear. They slept in caves, arcades and safe houses, drifting from meal to meal — sometimes days apart — hoping at all costs to avoid detection. For they knew how well their homeland doled out its punishment. There had been reports of refugees being returned to North Korea, all of them strung together with a wire through their noses.
What we have here, presumably, since it is a paraphrase by the author rather than a direct quote, is “Heo” relaying to the reporter something he had heard about rather than seen himself. And, this is where you misrepresent the quote. It doesn’t appear that the refugee himself even implies that the nose-stringing happens in China; in fact, it appears that if it happened at all — and the reporter does such a nice job putting this in the passive voice and making relatively clear that it’s a rumor — the action would have taken place on North Korean soil.
As odious as the whole thing is (and I agree altogether that wires or not, it is sick business sending the refugee North Koreans from Manchuria by force back to sure punishment in the DPRK), the vision you imply with your own powerful prose is one of North Korean agents moving through Chinese territory along the border with a bunch of captured hogs/human beings strung along in train, and that, ergo, China is even more complicit with the regime of torture and beatings and killings and mistreatment of these people than heretofore known. And I don’t believe this is accurate.
While the Daily NK reports recently on North Korean agents in China in the late 1990s and a sexually-frisky defector was reportedly on the lookout for South Korean ministers in Manchuria much more recently, the implication of your quote goes beyond.
Allow me to explain what I mean:
According to my observations in the border region, talking to Chinese experts, and reading of the Chinese press, the PRC leadership and certainly the PLA is, to the contrary, not at all eager to see North Korean troops on their soil and in the past year has even issued somewhat demeaning press reports in mainline nationalist journals like the Global Times/Huanqiu Ribao [环çƒæ—¶æŠ¥] about individual North Korean border guards gone rogue, and by extension, the force and effectiveness of the Chinese border guards (of whom there are to my recent observation, not so many, with one exception the five or so AK-47 wielding PLA/bianfang in camouflage valiantly defending a karaoke island from intrepid North Koreans in little Linjiang, Jilin province — but there are others, of course) in tossing such intruders into the relevant mobile prison/big fat paddy wagon near Kaishantun.
Additionally, the basic issue which seems to be raised by your quote — North Korean security forces in China — applies equally to the Ling/Lee/Koss debacle. Throughout the spring, the specter of North Korean troops/agents crossing the border was implied in Western media but never substantiated. It was certainly not asserted in the Chinese media, who were presumably getting their facts straight with the help of testimony from Mitch Koss, his remarkable camera, and local Chinese-Koreans.
Does no one care, or find consequential, what China’s attitude would be in such a highly-publicized incident in the event that it were true that KPA troops hunting for foreigners walked into Jilin? In analyzing things should we not be aware of Chinese sensitivities about “territorial integrity” in a chuck of territory (one no less where Koreans in the early 1930s were overwhelmingly seen by Chinese as the spearhead of Japanese imperialism, not guerrilla fighters) which go way deeper than Tibet ever could? What is the functional linkage between KPA border guards and those on the Chinese side? Neglect of the basic issue — China’s response to the idea of KPA on Chinese soil — has, regrettably, been a completely unexamined facet of the whole CurrentTV affair.
Finally, as to your liberal interpretation of the original quote: this is not to say that the PRC has never allowed North Korean agents on its territory in pursuit of refugees and/or the South Koreans (and ethnic Koreans) who help them, and it is certainly not to say that the PRC is not deeply complicit with the return of refugees to the DPRK. And it is also not to obfuscate the fact that the Chinese government condones and participates in gross violations of human rights in the name of state security. But in spite of our disdain for the policy that returns refugees against their will to North Korea, we should be staunchly factual in describing the methods of the inhumane policy, whose inhumanity really does not need to be embellished in order to garner effective support.
If other sources assert that North Koreans are strung together by their noses with wire in China before being forcefully repatriated, I would of course be interested (though not happy) to learn of their existence.
According to this 2004 report,
This 2003 report, which may also be sourced to the Christian NGO, Voice of the Martyrs, states:
I recently heard a reporter for a major news organization tell me he’s heard the same reports from defectors, but of course, the Chinese never let anyone observe it first-hand.
Would you at least agree with me that in a just world, the U.N., the ICRC, and the rest of the Human Rights Industry would be making at least as big a deal about “getting to the bottom of this” as how many times we had to waterboard KSM to make him reveal what sequels he had planned after 9/11?
As to the issue of North Koreans operating in China, multiple reports confirm that China allows it. Please begin with this report from the Congressional-Executive Committee on China, and then read this from the Daily NK. How on earth did the North Koreans kidnap Rev. Kim Dong Shik, a wheelchair-bound senior citizen and U.S. resident, and spirit him back across the border without the Chinese being complicit? Of course the Chinese knew. South Korea actually captured one of the North Korean agents who took part and convicted him for it.
Thanks for the extensive documentation. There is an awful lot of bad stuff here to sort out.
It makes me wonder if the fragmented landscape of critiques of Chinese human rights will ever result in the kind of inquiry you propose — the Tibetans with one grievance, the Uighurs with another, children’s advocates, and artists crying foul about post-earthquake cover-ups… I don’t know what it says about our own domestic debate, such as it is, about interrogations and torture (I’d rather not comment on that), but within the vast landscape of human rights issues in China, I suppose that the North Korean refugee component is just one fragment. Perhaps the North Korean Human Rights Act changes the equation or elevates this issue further, in spite of the fact that I think the Chinese government is really, really not listening and the Chinese people are putting virtually no pressure on their own state (because they certainly do have a proven capability to apply pressure to the state on any number of issues). But, as with the links you’ve provided, I obviously have some reading to do before anything intelligent issues from my little work station in this big quest. Thanks again for the response and the resources.
My question is how can we turn the world’s light onto the horrible human rights violations of the North Korean and Chinese governments? As terrible these governments are I believe they would prefer the world not knowing and would act differently if the world did know andr really cared.
There is still a bunch of work to do on verifying/updating the Daily NK translations on the issue of North Korean border guards collaborating with Chinese security forces, but I made some progress recently and got one of your frequently-cited stories translated here.