SEOUL - The capture of two American cable TV journalists by North Korean border
guards has added a new dimension to the atmosphere of rising tensions
surrounding the Korean Peninsula.
Now negotiators must work furiously to extricate the pair from North Korean
custody while worrying about North Korea's plan to launch a
missile-cum-satellite some time between April 4 and April 8. It's as though
Pyongyang timed the episode of the journalists deliberately to heighten a sense
of calamity and grab the attention of a world grown weary of mere rhetoric.
All bets are off as to how long the North Koreans will hold the two young women
- Chinese-American Laura Ling and Korean-American Euna Lee - and their
driver-guide, a Chinese citizen who
belonged to the large ethnic Korean minority in northeastern China. Although
North Korea has been known to return those who've strayed across the border in
a matter of weeks or months, the secretive nation is also notorious for holding
abductees of kidnappings and hijackings in perpetuity in a grand bargaining
game for prestige and power.
For Ling and Lee, their capture came at a most inopportune time. North Korea's
propaganda machine was already warning of "all-out confrontation", declaring
that any attempt to shoot down its missile would be "an act of war", and, as
usual, excoriating South Korea's conservative president, Lee Myung Bak, as "a
traitor".
It's a no-brainer for North Korean propagandists to claim that Ling, Lee and
their guide were on an espionage mission when guards warned them not to shoot
scenes of the North from the Chinese side of the Tumen River that forms North
Korea's northeastern border with China.
Exactly what happened next is still unclear, although the producer who was with
them, Mitch Koss, has doubtless told all he knows to United States and Chinese
officials.
Koss got away from the clutches of the North Koreans and reported the capture
of Ling and Lee on Tuesday morning. It's still not certain how far they had
ventured onto the frozen Tumen. It is also unknown if they had crossed into
North Korean territory or if the North Korean guards lured or chased them.
What is clear, however, is that American diplomats are trying frantically to
obtain their release through every conceivable channel, including North Korea's
mission to the United Nations in New York, the Chinese government in Beijing
and the Swedish Embassy that represents the US in Pyongyang.
The capture of Ling and Lee, who were on assignment for the Vanguard program of
Current TV, the Internet network that was the brainchild of former US vice
president Al Gore, comes amid huge denunciations of North Korea's upcoming
missile launch by all the countries with the most to fear from North Korean
missiles, that is, the US, Japan and South Korea.
The Japanese, still obsessed over the fate of fellow citizens kidnapped by
North Korea a generation ago, are especially concerned about the missile
launch. North Korea's Taepodong-2 missile could be launched to fly over Japan,
as did the Taepodong-1 which was launched on August 31, 1998.
All of which raises the possibility of bringing New Mexico governor Bill
Richardson onto the scene. It was Richardson who managed to spring an American
named Evan Hunziker, who had been held for three months after swimming across
the Yalu River, the long Chinese-North Korean frontier on the western side of
the peninsula. Richardson also came to the rescue of an American helicopter
pilot who had strayed over North Korean territory before being shot down.
American diplomats have also suggested that Chinese leaders might help by
appealing to North Korea's Premier Kim Yong-il, no relation to the North's Dear
Leader Kim Jong-il, while Premier Kim is in China this week in search of
support for the North's beleaguered economy. China's President Hu Jintao had
already called for North Korea to return to six-party talks on its nuclear
program when news broke of the capture of the journalists.
The problem, however, is that Chinese authorities might be almost as
unsympathetic as the North Koreans, considering that the journalists were on
Chinese soil reporting on North Korean refugees fleeing into China. Defying
international pressure, the Chinese consider them "economic migrants", refuse
to accord them refugee status and routinely return them to North Korea to face
fates ranging from beatings and jail terms to torture and execution.
So why should the Chinese rush to help a journalistic team that was on the
border to report a scene that Beijing finds embarrassing? As for the North
Koreans, they would view the journalists' mission as still more distasteful,
considering the horror stories they would report of the suffering that compels
North Koreans to flee to China.
The most distressing aspect of the journalists' capture may not be their own
ordeal but that of those whom they have already interviewed - and whose voices
and images are captured on videotape that the North Koreans will have unloaded
from their cameras.
Ling, writing on a website diary of the trip, had said that almost every day
she had been hearing "too many sad stories" while interviewing North Korean
defectors in South Korea before going to China. North Koreans in interviews
routinely ask journalists not to reveal details that would jeopardize the lives
of friends and family members. Still, many questions remain: what stories had
the reporters picked up in China, and how much was on their videotapes? Did
they shield the identities of those they interviewed? Did they show faces, and
did they reveal names?
Ling and Lee would have to be extremely strong to withstand interrogators with
years of experience in forcing confessions. The North Koreans will be
especially eager to extract full details in view of the hardening of positions
in both South and North Korea and plans for the missile launch.
It was undoubtedly the fear of such an interrogation that moved a Christian
pastor to reportedly warn the journalists "against getting too close to the
border" with North Korea. It was one thing to stare across the line from the
road on the Chinese side, well above the river bank, as many journalists,
including this one, have done; it is quite another to go down to the river and
out on the ice.
"I suspect that they got too ambitious," said the pastor, Chun Ki Won. Chun
must now worry about the future of the network he's set up in northeastern
China to expedite the flow of North Korean refugees.
It's safe to assume that North Korean security police by now are poring over
every detail in the journalists' notes, as well as every inch of videotape, for
details on their contacts. Whatever they can't figure out from the notes and
tapes, they may try to "persuade" Ling and Lee to tell them.
On the basis of whatever Ling, Lee and the guide reveal, North Korean agents
may be able to track down those inside China who are helping refugees.
While Ling and Lee may survive the ordeal, it is the fate of their contacts
that is most worrisome to the Korean Christians who made the mistake of trying
to help them, and their own cause, by telling them where to go for their story.
Journalist Donald Kirk has been covering Korea - and the confrontation of
forces in Northeast Asia - for more than 30 years.
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