A sombre scoop for Pyongyang's pawns
By Donald Kirk
WASHINGTON - North Korean strategists must be loving every minute of it.
They've got two American women in their net, charged with entering the country
illegally and committing "hostile acts". They've got the United States State
Department working behind the scenes for their release while talking tough in
public about North Korean "provocations". They've got the women's relatives -
including an older sister who once made a television documentary exposing the
horrors of life in North Korea - appealing publicly for mercy. And they've also
got activists across the US staging "vigils", praying and pleading for justice.
But none of this is likely to have much impact on authorities in North Korea
when it comes to deciding the fate of the two women, who were arrested by North
Korean soldiers on March 17 while on
assignment for Current TV, the San Francisco Internet television network that's
half-owned by Al Gore, the former US vice president.
If such gestures do have a cumulative effect, it's more likely to be on how to
best exploit the women's case to extract full value from them. The pair could
be useful bargaining tools in the much greater struggle for recognition as a
nuclear power. Rewards for full membership in the global nuclear club would be
billions of aid in return for pledges to not intimidate South Korea, Japan and
the US with warheads fitted to intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Through the trial, North Korean authorities can wreak a measure of revenge on
all the journalists who've been reporting for years on the horrors of life in
North Korea, mostly relayed by defectors who've made it to China. The two women
at the center of the attention, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, stand as perfect
symbols of those who've written highly critical articles and gotten away with
it.
Ling and Lee were working on the kind of story the North Koreans hate - an
expose of abuses perpetrated on women sold into marriage or prostitution in
China after fleeing North Korea - when the North Korean soldiers grabbed them.
Did the North Koreans dare cross the shallow Tumen River border, then covered
with thick ice, and seize them on Chinese territory? Were the women lulled into
thinking they could go to the North Korean side and shoot some quick video
before anyone there saw them? Or were they out there on the ice, in a kind of
no man's land, technically perhaps just a few feet over the line between China
and North Korea.
Ling and Lee had interviewed sources in China and South Korea and were hoping
for first-hand, exclusive footage to back up the story at the time of their
arrest. They may yet get their exclusive story - of existence as high-level
international prisoners. Or they could go on suffering lonely uncertain lives
as hostages, held in a "state guesthouse" near but not in Pyongyang, treated
fairly well by North Korean standards but never knowing how long they have to
stay before their captors decide they've exploited the case for all it's worth.
This could include the reward of more aid from the US and its allies.
One thing is for sure: we're not going to get the story from Pyongyang's Korean
Central News Agency (KCNA). A one-sentence line on KCNA stating that the two
would go on trial at 3 pm on June 4 was all that it took for news agencies to
go crazy. Sometimes the articles said the two had already gone on trial, as
KCNA did not follow up with another line saying the trial had actually begun.
By their own lights, North Korean authorities have been pretty open about the
two women. The arrest of the women was announced in March and their June 4
trial date was stated in May. Such relative openness contrasts with North
Korea's long record of non-disclosure of whatever has happened to a score or
more of Japanese kidnapped on Japanese soil in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
It is also different to the North's failure to clarify the whereabouts of
several hundred South Korean fishermen picked up in North Korean waters.
Considering that the date of the trial, and then the exact time, were revealed
well in advance, one should expect the next bulletin to be an announcement of
the verdict and the sentence. Don't think, however, that we'll be privy to
quotations from the judge and prosecutor. The Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang,
representing US interests in North Korea in the absence of diplomatic relations
between Washington and Pyongyang, has sent an emissary on two occasions to see
the women. However, it was barred along with most others from having one of its
diplomats in the audience at the trial.
Were a Western diplomat able to witness the proceedings first-hand, the report
would no doubt be critical. A guilty verdict is pre-ordained. Anything less
would be an affront to the rule of Dear Leader Kim Jong-il - an offense that
would result in the jailing of the perpetrator. The observer would also report
that the session went by very fast, with no calling of witnesses or resorting
to experts on technical or critical points.
The details of the charges may or may not come out in the courtroom, but we can
be reasonably sure that "espionage" is on the list. The North Korean prosecutor
has broad latitude to interpret that charge. Merely standing on the Chinese
side of the Tumen River and pointing the camera toward the North Korean side
could well be interpreted as spying.
Silence on the American side is also frustrating. The US media somehow are
overlooking the existence of one important witness to all that happened when
the two women were picked up.
That's Mitch Koss, the cameraman producer who was with them but got away. Koss
is back in the US, sworn or ordered to silence by Current TV and the State
Department on what he saw. He could possibly shed light on whether the two
women were delivered to the North Koreans by their Korean-Chinese guide - a
suspicion harbored by South Korean activists who knew the guide.
While dropping mention of Koss, Western news reports persist in stating
authoritatively that punishment for the women could be "10 years of hard labor"
or perhaps "five years". Such reports, however, are based only on the
observations by Korea-watchers of a few other cases. North Korean authorities
could impose any sentence they want - and then suspend the sentences and free
the women.
In the meantime, North Korea has plenty of reasons to postpone a final
sentencing. Kim Jong-il, frail and ailing, is obviously far more concerned with
gaining credibility and legitimacy for his choice as successor, his youngest
son Kim jong-un. The elder Kim also is no doubt obsessed with the exact timing
of the next missile test - and possibly of the next underground nuclear test as
well.
The North Koreans also get offended every time a top-level American visitor
visits the region, and one immediate complication of the trial is that it
coincides with a trip to South Korea, China and Japan of a US delegation led by
Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg.
Steinberg has not talked publicly about the two women but has made clear in
meetings with South Korea's President Lee Myung-bak and other top officials
that the US is not willing to negotiate their fate. Could he have had their
case in mind when he assured Lee that the US would not offer more aid for North
Korea. He said this was due to the North's underground test of a nuclear
warhead on May 25, test of a long-range missile on April 5 and its stated plans
for more such tests.
Steinberg called on Lee in the run-up to Lee's visit to the US in the middle of
this month, when he will meet President Barack Obama in the White House.
Lee in his meeting with Steinberg pressed for a United Nations Security Council
resolution as "a clear warning against North Korea's wrong behavior" and called
on all countries "to convince the North with one voice", according to South
Korea's Yonhap news agency. The resolution in question has nothing to do with
the two women. Rather, it would punish North Korea for its nuclear test,
strengthening sanctions already in place since the first such test on October
9, 2006.
In view of all that's going on, the case of the two women appears trivial.
Still, it presents unusual possibilities. How about giving them up to a
high-level American delegation? Gore comes to mind as the man for the job in
view of his control over the network for which the two women were working.
Gore would be perfect for the mission. His presence would acknowledge North
Korea's need for recognition as a member of the global nuclear club but would
not constitute official US recognition of anything. Surely he must have talked
over the case with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. He did get to know her
pretty well from their days in the White House of Bill Clinton - she as First
Lady, he as vice president.
Gore has been strangely silent throughout, all the more reason to think he's
waiting to give face to the North Koreans and rescue the two women - a happy
ending that may be too much to hope for.
Journalist Donald Kirk has been covering Korea - and the confrontation of
forces in Northeast Asia - for more than 30 years.
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