Laura Ling’s (凌志美) sister says the two US journalists briefly touched North Korean soil before they were captured and detained for months in the communist country.
“She said that it was maybe 30 seconds and then everything got chaotic. It’s a very powerful story, and she does want to share it,” Lisa Ling told CNN on Thursday.
A day after the reporters returned from Pyongyang on a private plane, Lisa Ling said her sister is still weak, exhausted and emotional.
Lisa Ling described how her sister clings to her family after months of isolation. She said she even went to a doctor’s appointment with her sister, just to keep her company.
Lisa Ling said Euna Lee’s husband told her that his four-year-old daughter, Hana, spent all day following Lee around the house from room to room. At one point during her detention, Lee called and left a voicemail message saying how much she loved her daughter, Lisa Ling said.
“They could play it for Hana all the time. Of all of us, little Hana had the most confidence that she would be seeing her mom soon,” Lisa Ling said.
Laura Ling told her family she was treated humanely, but meals were meager and her phone calls were monitored, Lisa Ling said.
“She had two guards in her room at all times, morning and night.”
And even though they couldn’t speak to her, somehow they developed a strange sort of kinship, Lisa Ling said.
“She had some really lovely things to say about the people who were watching over her,” she said.
The reporter passed her time in captivity reading, walking circles around her cell for exercise and planning when she would wash her hair, because water service was intermittent, Lisa Ling said.
At Laura Ling’s house on a quiet residential street in the San Fernando Valley, a man who identified himself as her brother-in-law came to the door and said politely that she wasn’t ready to speak about her ordeal yet.
Lisa Ling said her sister plans to write an editorial explaining what happened and how she was captured.
At the modest, two-story apartment building on the edge of Koreatown where Lee lives with her family, police cleared about a dozen reporters and photographers away from the driveway so she and her family could pull their car out. The three then drove away without speaking to reporters.
Lee, who sat in the front passenger seat, looked down and didn’t make eye contact with the photographers, most of whom were from Korean-language media outlets.
Minutes after they drove away, a delivery service left a fruit basket for them.
Lee and Ling, reporters for former vice president Al Gore’s San Francisco-based Current TV, were working on a story about the trafficking of women when they were arrested in March. They were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor after being convicted of illegally entering North Korea.
Both were pardoned following talks between Clinton and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. They arrived at Burbank’s Bob Hope Airport at dawn on Wednesday for a jubilant reunion with family and friends.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese