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Rumors Persist That Laura Ling and Euna Lee Were Lured; China Uses Video to Launch Pogrom Against Refugees

It wouldn’t make crossing the border any less dumb, but it would make North Korea much more culpable:

“There is a strong suspicion that he [the guide] was heavily involved and it was a trap,” said an experienced activist who has led dozens of refugees to safety. There has been no word of Kim.

Such suspicions are bolstered by a first-hand account given to The Sunday Times by an American missionary who was warned by Chinese police a month earlier that the North Koreans were trying to capture a foreign journalist.  In February a detachment of plainclothes Chinese officers detained the missionary as he took photographs not far from a tourist spot at a bridge across the river at the city of Tumen.

He was held for interrogation for several hours and later released without charge. During his questioning the officers warned him that the North Koreans were known to be hunting for a “foreign prize” along the twisting, narrow course of the river, where the border is erratic as it meanders along sandbanks and shallows. “They were after a journalist,” said the missionary. [Times of London]

I can’t quite bring myself to let go of this because (a) it’s what I’ve been hearing all along, and (b) the timing is just so convenient — two American hostages fall into Kim Jong Il’s hands right as he’s fueling a missile and preparing for a nuke test.  What are the odds of that?

Meanwhile, my worst fears are realized:

“The Chinese police have started pursuing missionaries and NGO [nongovernmental organisation] activists helping refugees in China,” reported Lee Song-jin, a writer for the exile website Daily NK, in May.  “Korean-Chinese helpers . . . are going underground. As the network between helpers and refugees has started shaking, the number of refugees isolated from security has increased.

The activists say there is grave concern about the North Korean claim to have obtained six videotapes and a camera from the women, who had been interviewing refugees in China before their arrest.  North Korean and Chinese security agents are known to have cooperated in a search for refugees and their helpers in the cities of Tumen and Yanji. This led to dozens being sent back across the Tumen.

Laura Ling, Euna Lee, and Mitch Koss may owe a greater debt to the innocents they’ve harmed than they’ll ever be able to repay.  I’m glad it’s so easy to discount suspicions that they were working for the CIA, because ChiCom and North Korean intel couldn’t have done better than these two.

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8 Responses

  1. I’m thoroughly disgusted by this. I’ve said it before, but they should have never been near the border if they were reporting on refugees and sex trafficking victims, so whether they were lured or not is a moot point for me. They should have never taken this risk. As the article points out, they were looking for another angle at the story, I can only assume that they were trying to get footage of an actual transaction, a North Korean woman being sold to a broker at the border, which I also have qualms about.

    Didn’t they realize that by going near the border, they were risking not only their own lives, but the lives of countless others? How could you not take that into account? Or were they just that stupid and oblivious?

    Derek Zoolander: Do you understand that the world does not revolve around you and your do whatever it takes, ruin as many people’s lives, so long as you can make a name for yourself as an investigatory journalist, no matter how many friends you lose or people you leave dead and bloodied along the way, just so long so you can make a name for yourself as an investigatory journalist, no matter how many friends you lose or people you leave dead and bloodied and dying along the way?

    I hope this ends their careers.
    I fear that an added consequence is that North Korean has succeeded in effectively deterring reporters from investigating the plight of refugees.
    I hope that the faces of the refugees and trafficking victims are etched in Ling’s & Lee’s minds. Forever.
    I hope that Ling & Lee can redeem themselves.

  2. I’m even angrier than I was when I read that Laura Ling and Euna Lee had indeed crossed the border…

  4. It’s ok though!
    Those two horse’s-ass’ will make it all a-ok by dedicating their multi-million dollar book to the victims in the dedication page, while they cry all the way to the bank.

  5. If this is what actually happened, then they inadvertently put refugees and their helpers in danger. But Ling & Lee are not the ones targeting refugees for repatriation, China and North Korea are. So they are not to blame.

    If anyone watched Seoul Train, one of the helpers tried using a legal petition for asylum. That didn’t work and the family he was helping was arrested and presumably repatriated.

    By nature, helping North Korea refugees in China will increase their danger just by raising their profile and bring increased scrutiny. Are you going to blame every single NGO and missionary for bring this increase risk?

    Its may seem logical to be angry at Ling & Lee right now, but I find it distracts from blaming the real culprits behind all this human misery.

  6. I am somewhat concerned that all this piling on and kicking the two are getting to the point of over-reach might dampen needed coverage of this issue in that area. Little enough information in multi-media form gets out from this area, and those few video reporters are the best source for promoting awareness in a world that largely couldn’t care less.

    Any individual or small group working in that border area is in danger of being stopped and questioned by the Chinese authorities and having their material seized or at least examined.

    Yes, if the two crossed over the border by choice, they increased the chance of their material being used against the people they were in contact with to an extend that deserves condemnation.

    But, people are getting carried away with their criticism, and I worry slightly it will spill over.

    I think extending it to attacking Lisa Ling for her tricking the North Korean authorities is one such overreach. —- That documentary gave us a good window into North Korea and in a form that grabbed attention to these issues among a much wider audience than what normally gets reported day to day in the news and Korea-related websites. It will be replayed on cable stations over the years, and it is advertisements like that that have the best chance of increasing awareness to North Korea.

    The bottom line for me is — hundreds of thousands of North Koreans are suffering in inhumane conditions every single day. Tens of millions of North Koreans are suffering – with many dying – year to year – decade to decade:

    Shutting down video reporting from the border area – or the brave tiny handful who risk taking video inside Korea to smuggle out for the world to see – because some limited number of North Koreans might/will be harmed if the video they are on is seized by Korean or Chinese authorities —— would be a travesty…

  7. The North Korean regime is evil whether these two women and Mitch Koss deliberately (and foolishly) crossed over on their own or not. But I think from the beginning a lot of people just really didn’t want to — or couldn’t — get their head around the possibility that two of the Americans involved may have been (at least partly) culpable for their own predicament. And even now, some still seem unwilling to grasp that culpability, so we see things like this.

    Truthfully, I never really bought it in the first place, and I was really surprised that own argument from back in March was so difficult for people to believe. In hindsight, I might seem prescient, but I truly thought this was a no-brainer five months ago:

    I pray for the safety of these women, and I hope that we can get them out without making any concessions to Pyongyang, but they have likely caused a lot of trouble for the United States (Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is already involved), if not embarrassment. Like the Korean missionaries in 2007 who thumbed their noses at government warnings not to go to Afghanistan to proselytize, they did their own thing and probably made things harder for other people trying to save lives.

    Patrols in the DPRK-PRC border area will likely be stepped up, making it harder for North Koreans to escape. Good job, folks. Sounds like someone else will pay because you thought you were bulletproof. (Oh, and the men aren’t out of the woods either; they’re being detained by the Chinese authorities.)

    I’m not saying that you should not be reporting on the plight of North Korean escapees, especially the women who fall prey to evildoers on the Chinese side, but what was gained by walking those ten or twenty meters into the river border area, especially at a time of heightened tensions over North Korea’s pending missile launch, when it might need a distraction or a bargaining chip? Was it worth it?

    Had I known that they were carrying the videotaped interviews of refugees they’d met in China, I would have been far harsher.