Friday, June 19, 2009
What's Happening with Journalists Seized in North Korea?
A recent MSNBC report notes that the U.S. is considering an envy to help free two American reports arrested and sentenced to 12 years of labor by the North Korean government for suspicion of hostile acts.
The arrest of Euna Lee and Laura Ling of Current TV has triggered a showdown between the country and the U.S, according to NBC's Andrea Mitchell.
The envoy would be a humanitarian act and not part of U.S. efforts to punish North Korea for it's recent displays of nuclear power.
It's hard to keep the lines that clean as North Korea has been on the edge of "in your face" behavior for quite some time. I think the arrests of these journalists is another phase of their strategy to challenge the U.S.
Secretary of State Hilary Clinton said, "We think the imprisonment, trial and sentencing of Laura and Euna should be viewed as a humanitarian matter," Clinton said. "We hope that the North Koreans will grant clemency and deport them."
The isolated North is probably less interested in having the women sent to its gulag, where poorly fed inmates often do backbreaking work in factories, coal mines and rice paddies."
Voice of America reports that North Korea's official news agency issued a report Saturday saying the journalists were arrested on March 17 while "illegally intruding into the territory" of the country at its border with China.
Sources in contact with the two reporters prior to the incident say they are Chinese-American Laura Ling and Korean-American Euna Lee. They work for San Francisco-based Current TV, a network founded in part by former Vice President Al Gore. Both were apparently gathering video footage for a report on human rights abuses of North Korean refugees who cross into China.
State-run news agency? Well, we all know what that means. Talk about Spin!
I urge media to stay on the trail of this one as it is essential that freedom of the press reign supreme here. We all need to know what is really going on and most of us have no other sources for our information. It needs to be a real as possible!
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3 comments:
It's pretty clear that the journalists aren't coming home until they've served their full sentences. North Korea has videotape of them bragging that they had entered the country without permission. And the documentary's producer, Mitch Koss, doesn't dispute that his crew deliberately crossed the border in pursuit of a hot story. Obviously, the sentence is excessive, but the United States doesn't have control over North Korea's judicial system.
President Obama certainly isn't going to try to interfere with that country's internal workings. He wants a hand-off policy in which no nation asserts its superiority to another. Additionally, he's pushing for nuclear reforms and doesn't want to compromise those efforts just to free two people.
As Americans, what we can do is provide for the families of the women. For example, Euna has a four year old daughter who will need a new mother and plenty of support as she grows up. We can also pray that Ling and Lee are healthy when they leave prison in 2021, and do not commit any infractions which may lengthen their sentences. That way, Euna will be reunited with her daughter when the child turns 16, and they may spend many happy years together after that.
Kim wants leverage. he is a madman, drugged, mentally beaten and paranoid. he seems convinced we will launch nukes at him.
which we won't but 9 year old brains don't get that.
Those journalists are just pawns, sadly, for now.
We just need to bite the bullet and engage him. Confront the bully is the only way to get him to back down
I, too, think the journalists are pawns. Even if, as Art wrote in the first comment, they were entering the country without permission the sentence is extraordinary for the "crime".
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