News of 2 American Journalists Detained in North Korea

[Granite]

News that 2 American Journalists have been sentenced to 12 years of hard labour in North Korea. The two were working for Al Gore's independent cable company Current TV, on an investigative project, looking into human trafficking along the Chinese-North Korean Border.

Wikipedia article on the matter. Not usually recognized as a news source, it provides a summary of several reports and articles and will be updated as events develop.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_impri ... orth_Korea" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Reporters Without Borders article. Their sources indicate that NK Border Guards may have "arrested" the journalists on Chinese Soil.

http://www.rsf.org/American-reporters-g ... evere.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

NY times article with some insight into how their detention fits into a broader context of negotiations:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/03/world ... .html?_r=1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

“The journalists considerably weakened their government’s leverage against the North,” said Kim Tae-woo, a North Korea expert at the Korea Institute for Defense Analysis in Seoul.

Details on where they will likely be sent:

http://english.chosun.com/site/data/htm ... 00915.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Rangerguru]

That's what they get for thinking that because they are media, nothing can happen to them. Just like the idiots that go to combat zones and try to interview the enemy and end up getting captured.

[Silverback]

Stupidity should be very painful.

[Jim]

Stupidity should be very painful.

In this case, I'd say it will be.

[Kilted Heathen]

Send in more journalists.

[Rock Island Ranger]

Send in more journalists.

Concure

[Jim]

Please bear in mind that she (and the other reporter) work for a news company owned by Al Gore.

US reporter jailed in NKorea calls sister
Thu Jul 9, 8:44 am ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) – One of the two US reporters jailed in North Korea made a telephone call to her US-based sister, Lisa Ling said in an interview broadcast on Thursday.

"It was a tremendous relief to hear Laura's voice last night," Lisa Ling told CNN affiliate KOVR in California. "It was only the first time I have heard her voice in weeks," she said, adding the call was made late Tuesday. "That silence has been just so terrifying and deafening."

Border guards detained American TV reporters Laura Ling and Euna Lee on March 17 along the frontier with China while they were researching a story about refugees fleeing North Korea.

A court on June 8 sentenced Ling, 32, and Lee, 36, to 12 years of "reform through labor" for an illegal border crossing and an unspecified "grave crime."

Laura Ling "was very specific about the message she was communicating and she said, 'look, we violated North Korean law and we need our government to help us. We're sorry about everything that happened but now we need diplomacy," Lisa Ling told KOVR.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090709/ts ... koreamedia" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Nomad]

They'll do a year, maybe two, then they'll be back home in the US. We have too much power, even with a weak administration at the wheel.

[K.Ingraham]

We have too much power, even with a weak administration at the wheel.

No we don't.

Back when we had a strong administration and a media largely on our side, we had a total war with North Korea,* a total no-holds-barred kill-'em-all leave-nothing-standing not one wall of one peasant hut nor peasant standing kind of war. Plausibly, two million Koreans died during that little unpleasantness, with some sources claiming as many as four million. When the US bombing campaign destroyed every legitimate military target on the commie side of the line, the staff simply kept redefining the definition of military target until it meant any human built structure or human on the northern side of the MLR was fair game. '50 - '53 was brutal to the extreme.
The lesson the North Koreans took away was that they can survive a kind of war America cannot fight any more. They did it once already and have been feeding their citizens the resulting mythology for the fifty six years since, all the while digging in and preparing for the next round. Since the mid 1990s, we have been training the little weirdos that we haven't the backbone to stand up to their 8,000 tubes pointed at Seoul, they must surely believe that now that they have a big firecracker we are really ready to piss our pants.
They believe that we used biological weapons on them back then and today they see on CNN that we cannot drop a single 750 lb HE bomb without world scrutiny. They are not afraid.


The Obama regime has decided to ignore the NKs, so as to deny them the satisfaction of feeling important, and probably also in the hopes that the DPRK will simply go away somehow. How this plays out will be interesting.



*limited to the penninsula geographicaly, but no military, political or moral restraint shown by either side within the informally agreed upon geographic limits of the war.

[Nomad]

I still think that regardless of what has been happening with the political indoctrination of the north, there is a fear of US reprisals.

The US can levy its power in many different manners, not limited to diplomacy.

[Looon]

They're fucking idiots and literally deserve what they get.

[K.Ingraham]

I still think that regardless of what has been happening with the political indoctrination of the north, there is a fear of US reprisals.

The US can levy its power in many different manners, not limited to diplomacy.

It's not "indoc", it's their actual experience, well within the living memory of millions that's being reinforced, not just some half-baked political philosophy.
They aren't afraid of us.

FWIW, one thing I saw in Korea (1995) was that us Americans were a whole lot more concerned about the DPRK than the RoKs were.

[ANGRYCivilian]

A court on June 8 sentenced Ling, 32, and Lee, 36, to 12 years of "reform through labor" for an illegal border crossing and an unspecified "grave crime."

Reform through labor in North Korea does not sound good at all.

I suspect they'll be reformed through labor for a little while, then we'll get them out somehow.