by Laura Ling
I immediately went for the ones from Lisa and Iain and scanned through them for any information. It seemed the North Korean authorities had the same idea—Lisa’s and Iain’s letters were at the top of the pile, organized by date. Some of the pages even had coffee stains on them. I wondered whose eyes had perused the letters before mine.
I buried myself in each page and studied every word for a sign that something was happening that would get us home. But even though the letters were vague about any efforts that were under way, they were full of love and encouragement, things I needed most during my fits of desolation.
In one letter from Lisa, I could see that she was strategically sending messages of apology and goodwill to the North Korean authorities. She wrote:
I hope those who are holding you know that you and Euna didn’t mean any harm. Maybe this incident will provide an opportunity to establish a better relationship between our two countries. At the end of the day, we’re all human beings and the main reason there’s ever hostility is because there’s been so little face to face: people don’t take the time to get to know one another and instead believe the sensationalism that is proliferated with such constancy.
Reading her words made me proud. Here was my sister trying to affect the situation even though she was half a world away. But while Lisa was being calculating in her words to the North Koreans, at the same time she was also being a normal sister by cheering me up with frivolous details. She told me our dad had finally let her tweeze his gray eyebrows, something I’d been begging him to let me do forever. “I told him to do it for Laura!” she wrote. “And he did. I must say he looks infinitely better.” I laughed out loud imagining Lisa plucking out the gray hairs of our curmudgeon of a father.
She also told me she got a tattoo. She’d been cooped up at our mom’s house and was so exhausted from worry that she decided to do something to take her mind off things. “The tat says ‘love and peace’ in Arabic, and it’s in the shape of a dove. I actually love it and can’t wait for you to see it. I’m gonna try to convince you to get one too,” she wrote.
That night I lay in bed thinking about what tattoo I might get. “I hate the DPRK” and “FU*NK” were just a couple that came to mind.
SOME DAYS DURING OUR walks, Mr. Yee and I would make small talk. He asked me what I liked to do on the weekends back home, or how often I ate out at restaurants. I told him I liked to go to the beach and that my husband liked to surf.
“Is surfing like in that movie where there is a gang of bank robbers who put on masks of the various U.S. presidents? They were surfers, right?” he asked, referring to the movie Point Break starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze.
“Exactly!” I said, astonished he’d seen the film. He told me he also liked the 007 James Bond flicks, though he preferred the Sean Connery versions to the newer releases.
“We also like to go to the ocean,” he said. He explained that sometimes in the summertime after work, he and his colleagues went to the beach and barbecued clams that they found on the sand.
“That sounds like a lot of fun,” I replied.
It felt strange to imagine Mr. Yee in his life outside of the investigation. I never asked about his personal life, and he rarely brought it up. Once, in passing, he mentioned having a wife and kid, but beyond that, his world was a mystery to me.
Every few weeks Mr. Yee came bearing another envelope of letters. I heard from close friends and relatives as well as people I hadn’t spoken with in years. Many updated me on their day-to-day activities. It made me feel close to them, even though I was locked away on the other side of the planet. Some friends sent meditation techniques, which I immediately put into practice. My mother included a mental lesson each day. Others sent poetry, jokes, trivia, and puzzles. One poem, Maya Angelou’s “Caged Bird,” came to mean a great deal to me and I began reading it every morning. I derived strength from reading Angelou’s words about the caged bird singing for freedom, not because I thought of myself as a caged bird, but because it made me think of the brave souls of North Korea, caged in a political system that was denying them their basic freedoms. I reflected back on my interviews with the defectors who had fled North Korea in search of better lives.
EVENTUALLY I DEVELOPED a sense of trust with my guards, and they became more relaxed and lenient with me. During the day, they would partially open the curtains in their room to let in some natural light. They also let me sit in their area, and as long as I kept a safe distance from the window, I was allowed to look outside and take in the scenery. I developed a daily routine: after I finished my morning duties of mopping the floor, dusting off the furniture, and cleaning the bathroom, I’d sit and peer out the window. Over time, I observed small leaves form on naked tree branches, and I watched as a blackbird searched for twigs to build a nest. It was strange to be witnessing nature and the changing of seasons from behind a window, without being able to inhale the fragrance of a blossoming flower or to feel the day’s first dew on shoots of grass that were just emerging.
I never brought up politics or my case with the guards, but there were times when they initiated conversations about their political system.
“We are not a rich country,” Min-Jin said one evening while I was eating dinner. “But we have our pride. The United States puts sanctions on us because they don’t agree with our system. Why do they need to pick on us? We are just a small country. Our leader, Chairman Kim Jong Il, has worked so hard to provide for us, even though the rest of the world tries to hold us back. We have never acted aggressively toward any country. It is other countries that have always invaded our land and attacked us. If they attack us, we will fight.”
As she spoke, her eyes started to well up with tears. “Our leader is getting old, and it hurts me to see him get old because he has devoted everything to us. We want to work hard to make him proud.”
I told her I believed our two countries could become friends in time and that perhaps things might change with the election of our leader, President Obama.
“Every time you elect a new president, you say things are going to be different. But nothing ever changes,” she said. “I don’t think our countries will be friends in my lifetime.”
Min-Jin’s sentiments did not surprise me. Her feelings seemed to stem not only from an intricate propaganda network created to instill hatred for the United States in the North Korean people, but also from a history of mistrust between our two countries. I knew that her opinions were not hers alone but were shared by the North Korean people and government, and I feared they would want to punish me as a way of hurting the United States.
LISA
ON APRIL 24, NORTH KOREA finally broke its silence and issued a statement that, of all things, pertained to Laura and Euna. A trial date had been set. According to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), “A competent organ of the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) concluded the investigation into the journalists of the United States.”
The trial date was set for June 4. I had just returned to my mom’s house after having lunch with a friend when the news broke online. Mom and I sat staring at our computer screen unable to speak for a few minutes. What did this mean? In previous cases of Americans detained in North Korea, releases were obtained after some diplomatic wrangling. This was unprecedented—no American had ever been tried in North Korea’s Supreme Court.
The phone rang. It was Iain. His voice sounded shaky. He was obviously distressed by the news. He said he was coming over. Iain is a quantitative analyst for an investment fund, and he went back to work a couple of weeks after Laura was arrested. His bosses could not have been more understanding of what he was going through. They said he could take all the time he needed and they meant it. Since most of our days were filled with sitting around and waiting, we told Iain he should go back to work as a way of settling his mind. From his office, he shot me about ten articles a day about anything related to North Korea, and we spoke by phone multiple times throughout the work hours
. Iain was devastated. In twelve years of knowing him, I had never witnessed him emotional or even the least bit shaken. Although he tried hard to maintain his composure, I saw a side of Iain that was deeply painful to behold. He started losing a lot of weight, and I would see his eyes well up in tears as he stared off into space. Laura was his world, and she had suddenly disappeared.
I phoned Governor Richardson, who told me not to overreact. “This date of a trial is good news,” he said. “At least they [the North Korean government] have given a firm date. Hopefully I’ll be able to go over there soon after that.”
We would have to wait until June 4 for North Korea to make its next move. In publicly setting this time frame, the North Korean government seemed to be declaring that there would not be an immediate release. Laura and Euna had already been detained for more than a month. And June 4 was more than another month away. Every day without word about my sister was a day too long.
LAURA
THOUGH I’M THE YOUNGER sibling by three years, I’ve always been the mature one. Lisa calls me Baby Girl, but it’s really she who is the more childlike of the two of us. Our dad often refers to Lisa as the “Senior Teenager” because she knows the name of every pop song on the radio. Our parents actually took a stab at being a nuclear family when Lisa was first born, which allowed her to have some sort of childhood. She was their first kid, after all, and perhaps they saw this as a chance for a new start in their rocky marriage. When she was really young, our parents doted on her, threw elaborate birthday parties for her, and took her to ballet and tap dance classes. But this charade of trying to be the perfect parents didn’t last long, and the fighting carried on.
By the time I arrived, it was clear my parents’ marriage wasn’t meant to be. I can’t recall a moment when Mom and Dad were happy or laughing together. No photos exist from my dance recitals, because I never had any. My mother’s nickname for me was Yuntsai, which in Chinese means “little old person.” I never made a big deal of my birthday, because unlike the other kids, who had pool and pizza parties, I always knew my birthday would just come and go. That changed one year when Lisa, realizing my birthday was quickly approaching, decided to throw me a little surprise celebration. I was turning ten and she was thirteen. She phoned up a few of my friends the night before my birthday and asked if they could come over to our house after school the next day. When I walked into our living room, I was greeted by a group of classmates screaming “Surprise!” Lisa was standing in the middle of the room with a look of pure glee. It wasn’t an extravagant setup, just a few friends playing games. But I’ll never forget when we gathered around our dining room table, and Lisa entered the room carrying a chocolate cake she’d baked with the help of my grandmother. She had the biggest smile on her face. To this day, I don’t like to celebrate my birthday. But no matter what, Lisa never lets my birthday pass without at least organizing a dinner with my close friends.
As I sat in the guards’ area looking out the window, I thought back to that cheery December afternoon when I didn’t have a care in the world. While I didn’t know what would become of me, for a brief moment I felt free.
Reading letters became another escape for me. I was grateful when Mr. Yee began to give me batches of letters on a fairly regular basis; they usually came every two weeks, but sometimes I would get them weekly. Some of the packets were thicker than others. But the one constant was hearing from Iain. One batch of letters might contain five letters from him, each several pages long.
My husband is the unflappable one of us, while I make my emotions known. Among friends, Iain always has a sunny disposition, but it’s hard to penetrate what he’s actually feeling. I think I’m the only person he’s confided in and opened up to for most of his life. In Iain’s first few letters to me, he seemed reserved; his tone was very pragmatic. I knew he was having trouble expressing himself on paper. He phlegmatically wrote about his days at work, updated me on news headlines, and offered words of encouragement. In one note he wrote, “I can’t always express what I’m feeling, but I know you know what I mean.” I did.
But as time went on, Iain’s words became more emotive. He began to pour out his heart to me, even though he knew his letters were being read by multiple staffers at the U.S. State Department and countless members of the North Korean regime. He wrote to me two times a day, and sent both typed and scanned handwritten letters so that I could see his penmanship and feel closer to him.
Every day at 5:00 P.M., Iain wrote to me from our dining room table in Los Angeles. He scanned a photo of himself to show me where he was situated so that I could think about him in that familiar location every day. This became our virtual meeting time. At 9:00 A.M. in Pyongyang, which was 5:00 P.M. in California, I sat in the guards’ area, looked out the window to the sky, and envisioned Iain writing to me. It became our time together, and during my captivity he never missed a date. His letters were a source of strength, comfort, and love. They were my oxygen.
In the letters, Iain included news summaries from the Economist and the New York Times to keep me up to speed on what was happening in the world. He scanned sheets from a journal I wasn’t even aware of, one he had kept more than a decade ago when we first started dating.
One journal entry was dated May 11, 1997, the day after we met at the concert. Just seeing his handwriting from that time brought me to tears. He wrote:
When I first saw her, I went “Wow!” I chat to her a bit, but nothing else. Then she rings today—we chat for about an hour and arrange to meet for coffee, go to the Geffen [Museum] when I get back from Miami. What am I going to do? She is beautiful.
Iain also included scanned photos from our vacations together, parties, our wedding, and family gatherings. Whenever there was a picture, Min-Jin and Hyung-Yee gathered around and looked over my shoulder curiously. They giggled like teenage girls at the sight of one of our wedding photos.
“You look very beautiful!” Min-Jin said, translating for Hyung-Yee.
“Yes, you look different than you do now. Much better with makeup,” chimed in Min-Jin.
I laughed. I remembered what I had looked like when I first met the guards. Battered and bruised, I resembled a wild animal. While my wounds had healed externally, I was still straggly and unkempt, and continued to feel pain on parts of my head and face.
In one photo that showed me wearing a long halter dress that exposed my bare shoulders, Min-Jin commented, “Wow, your dress is so sexy!” She had on a disapproving look. I hardly considered the full-length dress seductive, but in North Korea anything showing the slightest bit of skin, even just the shoulders, is considered unacceptable.
“Would you ever wear something like this?” I asked Min-Jin.
“No. It is not customary in our culture to wear such things. We also don’t wear blue jeans, because they are a symbol of America. But you are American, so it looks good on you,” she said.
About two months into my captivity, when it seemed the investigation was winding down, I pleaded with Mr. Yee to let me have one book that had been sent by Ambassador Foyer early on. Later that day, he came to my room carrying Ian McEwan’s Atonement. I devoured every word. I would close my eyes after reading passages that described the English countryside and imagine that I could feel “the cool high shade of the woods” and see “the sculpted intricacies of the tree trunks.” I fashioned McEwan’s fictional world in my mind so vividly that I could almost smell the rhododendrons. The novel depicts two lovers, Robbie and Cecilia, who become separated by war. Despite Robbie’s determination to make it back to England to be with Cecilia, he dies in France before he can be reunited with his love. It was hard to keep from imagining that the same fate could be mine, and that I would never see Iain again.
Along with the letters, I began receiving some packages from family and friends back home. One of the first parcels I received was from a dear family friend, Morgan Wandell, who lovingly sent some much-needed items such as tweezers and nail clippers. While I was able to keep t
hese basic things, I was denied the granola bars, chewing gum, and playing cards that were also included. I had stopped caring about my appearance or personal hygiene, but I was excited to get these small items, which helped occupy my time. Rather than immediately cutting my nails, which had grown long and chipped, I decided to wait until the weekend, to give me something to look forward to. These mundane acts would become another source of escape throughout my captivity.
In Iain’s letters, he said that he was sending one small package a week, but I normally received a batch of items every few weeks. Because of the sanctions, it’s almost impossible to send parcels to North Korea, so Iain would send them to his family in London, and they mailed them to Ambassador Foyer in Pyongyang. Most of the packages contained things like clothes, toiletries, books, magazines, and food. Ironically, my family sent me packets of dried seaweed, one of my favorite snacks. It’s a product of South Korea that is imported to the United States. Now it was being sent back around the world to North Korea. I wasn’t allowed most of the food, but after persistent begging and complaining that I needed certain items for my ulcer, I was given some crackers, seaweed, and dried fruit. I rationed these delicacies, allowing myself one or two pieces each day.
In one parcel Iain included a cashmere sweater he’d given me one birthday, one of his T-shirts so that I could feel closer to him, and a bottle of shampoo from a hotel in Napa Valley where we’d vacationed one summer. I washed my hair with it the next morning, and the sweet fragrance of blood oranges transported me back to Northern California’s rolling hills and wine country. I slept with his T-shirt beside me each night, putting part of it up to my nose. When I first received it, it smelled so much like my husband that some nights I’d wake up thinking he was right beside me. I’d open my eyes to see the same drab wall, but at least I had a piece of Iain with me.