Two US journalists jailed for illegally entering North Korea told how they were dragged back into the Stalinist state from China by soldiers, in their first account of the incident.
Television journalists Laura Ling (凌志美) and Euna Lee were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor by North Korea before being freed as part of a diplomatic mission spearheaded by former US president Bill Clinton last month.
In a lengthy statement posted on the Web site of the pair’s employers, Current TV, Lee and Ling said North Korean troops chased them back into Chinese territory and abducted them after they briefly crossed the border on March 17.
“We were firmly back inside China when the soldiers apprehended us,” said the women, who had been working on a story about human trafficking in the region at the time of their detention.
STRUGGLE WITH SOLDIERS
“We tried with all our might to cling to bushes, ground, anything that would keep us on Chinese soil, but we were no match for the determined soldiers,” the women said.
“They violently dragged us back across the ice to North Korea and marched us to a nearby army base, where we were detained,” they said.
Lee and Ling said that during the 140 days of captivity that followed, they were “isolated from one another, repeatedly interrogated and eventually put on trial and sentenced.”
While parts of their captivity “are still too painful to revisit,” the journalists said their experiences “pale when compared to the hardship facing so many people living in North Korea or as illegal immigrants in China.”
Although there were no signs marking China’s frontier with North Korea, the pair said they were aware that they heading toward the border crossing as they moved on foot across the frozen Tumen River.
The pair followed their Korean-Chinese guide across the river, who pointed to a nearby village where illegal immigrants were believed to be waiting in safe houses.
But they then grew anxious and decided to turn back and cross the river back into China.
SUSPICIOUS GUIDE
“Feeling nervous about where we were, we quickly turned back toward China. Midway across the ice, we heard yelling,” they said.
“We looked back and saw two North Korean soldiers with rifles running toward us. Instinctively, we ran,” they said.
The guide and another producer from Current TV, Mitch Koss, were able to outrun the soldiers, but Lee and Ling were captured.
“We didn’t spend more than a minute on North Korean soil before turning back, but it is a minute we deeply regret,” Lee and Ling said.
The two women hinted that they may have been led into an ambush by their guide, who had acted “oddly” on the morning of their capture.
“To this day, we still don’t know if we were lured into a trap. In retrospect, the guide behaved oddly, changing our starting point on the river at the last moment and donning a Chinese police overcoat for the crossing, measures we assumed were security precautions,” they said.
“But it was ultimately our decision to follow him, and we continue to pay for that decision today with dark memories of our captivity,” they said.
They expressed concern about how their well-publicized detention may have led to tighter security measures and more scrutiny toward activists and North Koreans living along the border.
“The activists’ work,” Lee and Ling said, “is inspiring, courageous and crucial.”
DESTROYED EVIDENCE
The journalists revealed how they scrambled to destroy notes and damage videotape in a brief moment when they were left alone with their belongings in an attempt to protect their sources.
“With guards right outside the room, we furtively destroyed evidence in our possession by swallowing notes and damaging videotapes,” they said.
The women denied statements made by Seoul-based priest Chun Ki-won — who assisted the journalists in planning their trip and has said in interviews he warned the women not to enter the area where they were captured.
“Among other things, Chun claimed that he had warned us not to go to the river,” they said.
“In fact, he was well aware of our plans because he had been communicating with us throughout our time in China, and he never suggested we shouldn’t go,” they said.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
RSS