Journalists Recount Imprisonment in North Korea
Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who work for Current TV, describe their attempt to cross the frozen Tuman River in order to document the route used by human traffickers who smuggle North Koreans over the border to China. The journalists followed a guide in the area, but saw no indications of an international border, such as a fence or barbed wire.
"We didn't spend more than a minute on North Korean soil before turning back, but it is a minute we deeply regret," Ling and Lee wrote. "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. But it was ultimately our decision to follow him, and we continue to pay for that decision today with dark memories of our captivity."
Ling and Lee said that they when they became uncomfortable about where they were, they turned around to head back to China. When they saw North Korean soldiers following them, they instinctively ran.
"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," they wrote. "They violently dragged us back across the ice to North Korea and marched us to a nearby army base, where we were detained."
Ling and Lee were released last month after former .
The journalists say that they "do not want our story to overshadow the critical plight of these desperate defectors."
Since their release, they said they have become aware that the situation along the China-North Korea border has become more difficult for aid groups and defectors.
"We regret if any of our actions, including the high-profile nature of our confinement, has led to increased scrutiny of activists and North Koreans living along the border. The activists' work is inspiring, courageous and crucial," Lee and Ling wrote. "We hope that now, more than ever, the plight of these people and of the aid groups helping them are not forgotten."