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New York, 6:38 AM
Tue Dec 8
49 posts in the last 24 hours
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I think what offends a lot of people about this is the suspicion that Laura Ling and the other journalist intentionally sneaked into North Korea so they could "report undercover" and then caused the U.S. a huge expense and, more importantly, legitimized North Korea by forcing Clinton to go in and save the day, and after causing all that trouble Ling is now profiting from her mistake at our expense.
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1) It can be argued the whole affair probably didn't cost much of any US money. The plane trip and the like was paid by Bing as well as the theatre by which the coming home celebration occurred and the people who physically went over there for "negotiations" were volunteers, including Bill.
2) One could also argue that this episode opened the door in regards to US/N. Korean relations in which it afforded an opportunity for Kim Jung's regime "get to know" the new administration and their response to such batshittery by them. I'm thinking that under Bush we would have either bombed them or in recogition of their threat, tried to bribe them with something while calling them names in public.
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08/12/09
The Mail on Sunday (dailymail.co.uk) has quoted Ling's husband as saying, "I’m afraid I can’t say anything. No one is allowed to talk. We are in the process of doing deals and I don’t want to mess anything up. Everything is being handled by our media adviser."
The newspaper goes on to say that "according to Professor Han Park, an American academic who was visiting North Korea at the time, they were housed in a guest villa designed for foreign visitors outside the capital of Pyongyang. Professor Park said that Korean officials laughed at any suggestion that the women were receiving harsh treatment. ‘We are not Guantanamo,’ he was told. [Commenter's note: Touche.] The women were allowed to receive daily letters from their husbands and parcels from home."
Now, I have been taken to task previously for quoting the Daily Mail, but what if their reporting actually has a few facts sprinkled in it? Would that be snarky?
And I will continue to bang the drum for the (gasp) National Geographic's February 2009 article, "Escape from North Korea." Their writer and photographer were clearly in the thick of it all, did not get captured, and produced the gut-wrenching story that Ling and Lee were sent to get, namely, the death-defying escapes of people who have sometimes had only grass to eat.
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