U.S. journalists released from N. Korea break silence on detention

By Sam Kim
SEOUL, Sept. 2 (Yonhap) -- Two U.S. journalists released after months of
captivity in North Korea said they had already "firmly" come out of the
communist state but were dragged back in by its soldiers when they 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," Laura Ling and Euna Lee said in a statement
Wednesday (Seoul time) on the Web site of their San Francisco-based employer,
Current TV.
"We were firmly back inside China when the soldiers apprehended us," they said in
their first account of the March 17 capture. "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 violently dragged us
back across the ice to North Korea and marched us to a nearby army base, where
we were detained," they said.
Ling and Lee said they were turning back on their way to a house that their guide
said was housing North Koreans preparing to smuggle into China when they heard
the yelling "midway across the ice."
"We looked back and saw two North Korean soldiers with rifles running toward us.
Instinctively, we ran," they said. "Producer Mitch Koss and our guide were both
able to outrun the border guards. We were not."
The journalists, brought back to the U.S. by former U.S. President Bill Clinton
on Aug. 5, had been sentenced to 12 years in labor camp for "hostile acts"
against North Korea.
"What did we do that was hostile?" they said, arguing they were convicted "not
for trespassing but for our work as journalists."
"Totalitarian regimes the world over are terrified of exposure," they said.
Ling and Lee defended themselves against claims they might have endangered those
working to help North Koreas flee the repressive regime in North Korea, saying
they destroyed their materials.
"We furtively destroyed evidence in our possession by swallowing notes and
damaging videotapes" during the early part of their detention, Ling, an ethnic
Chinese, and Lee, an ethnic Korean, said.
"People had put their lives at risk by sharing their stories, and we were
determined to do everything in our power to safeguard them," they said.
samkim@yna.co.kr
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