Somewhere Inside

by Laura Ling

  “Do you know when this will happen?”

  “That I don’t know. There are still some procedural things that need to be done.”

  Mr. Yee then questioned why I hadn’t been eating.

  “I can’t eat. I’m too upset,” I explained.

  “You must eat something.”

  “How can I eat after a verdict like that? The judge said, ‘no forgiveness and no appeal.’ What does that mean for us?”

  He shrugged off my question.

  “In Roxana’s case in Iran, there was an appeal,” I continued. “That’s how she was able to return home. Does ‘no forgiveness and no appeal’ really mean there is no hope left?”

  After taking several steps along the compound wall in silence, Mr. Yee finally said something that brought me back to life. “Law does not determine things. Man does,” he said, looking me in the eyes. “Do you understand?”

  I did. Suddenly I began to see things through a different lens. Even though Euna and I had been subjected to a trial and given a sentence that was most certainly preordained, the ultimate power lay in the hands of the regime. I wondered if the “man” Mr. Yee was talking about was Kim Jong Il or someone else who was jockeying for power. I wanted to figure out what needed to happen for the person who was calling the shots to overrule the law. Our fate was still murky, but I was relieved to know that, as Min-Jin had said, there might still be room for hope.

  LISA

  EVERY DAY SEEMED to present one surreal thing after another. I went to bed every night hoping that the next morning would bring positive developments in my sister’s case, but each morning I woke up fearing that something terrible might have happened overnight. June 12 presented a doozy.

  Sending a clear and decisive message, all fifteen members of the United Nations Security Council voted unusually but unanimously to impose the severest sanctions yet on North Korea. Susan Rice, America’s ambassador to the UN, called the sanctions “unprecedented,” and said the United States was very pleased with the vote. The resolution strengthened an arms embargo and called on the international community to search North Korean ships for weapons and materials that could be used to boost its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

  Not surprisingly, Pyongyang responded by threatening to declare war on any country that dared to stop its ships under these new sanctions.

  Days later, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates stated during a press conference that North Korea’s threats were being taken so seriously that U.S. defense forces had been ordered to prepare for a possible missile launch toward Hawaii.

  Right after Laura and Euna were captured, if someone had told me that U.S.–North Korean relations would get this bad so quickly, I would have said it wasn’t possible. This seemed like a cruel game, and all I could think was that Laura was one of the pieces. But in reality, it was anything but a game. We were quite literally in the midst of a global nuclear showdown, and every day seemed to bring worse news. Tensions were growing on all sides. I decided then that I needed to find other avenues to get Laura out, even if it meant trying to infiltrate North Korea.

  Around this time, I had a conversation with a friend who told me that someone she knew was trying to get in touch with me about my sister’s situation. All she would say about the man was that he was part of an organization affiliated with the U.S. government that performed highly classified special missions.

  I got the phone number of the man I’ll refer to as Brad and called him. Brad claimed that he had been a part of JSOC, the Joint Special Operations Command. JSOC consists of some of the most elite covert and clandestine operatives from multiple agencies and branches of the military in the United States. Brad told me that for years he had been working to infiltrate terrorist organizations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and South America. He used the phrase “human intelligence” a number of times. He thought he could help me. He said, “The phone is a dangerous device to those in my line of work. We live and work underground.”

  We didn’t discuss particulars because of security concerns. But he did let me know that sometime in the course of six weeks, his team, which consisted of other ex-JSOC members, would be able to “get eyes” on my sister. In other words, his team would determine exactly where Laura was being held. He would put this information together and present it to American intelligence agencies and military organizations. They would then try to determine what course of covert action was required to get Laura and Euna out.

  But there was no guarantee. It would cost five hundred to fifteen hundred dollars per day, depending on the expenses incurred. “There is huge risk to this,” Brad said repeatedly.

  When I asked how the operation would be conducted, Brad told me there was an “extensive underground cellular ring” in South Korea that pushes “throwaway” phones into the North. The phones are used to communicate between people separated by the demarcation line. He said his team had already made contact with some in this underground network who had been operating in it for years. They were ready to take action and find out where Laura and Euna were being kept. They just needed the “go-ahead.” I figured that meant having a financial transaction take place.

  That’s all he would tell me by phone. He warned me that failure to protect his identity would lead to major problems for him and provoke alarm within what he called “the system.” He said the greatest risk to him was that he would be “blackballed” in the network in which he operated. I swore I would never mention his name to anyone, ever.

  I told Brad I wasn’t sure the risk to my sister’s safety was worth it. What if Brad’s network got compromised? Could his efforts possibly jeopardize Laura’s situation and make matters worse? I wanted to give diplomacy a little more time, even though it hadn’t done much good in the past few months. It seemed as if every time we thought we had an opening, the door got slammed in our faces. So I wasn’t about to rule out the Brad option, or any others for that matter.

  LAURA

  WITHIN A FEW DAYS after the trial, I began to feel an intense, burning pain in my stomach area. I had also been vomiting uncontrollably whenever I ate something. I feared my ulcer was flaring up and asked Mr. Yee if I could see a doctor.

  “You will be going to a hospital for a full medical checkup,” he replied. “It’s part of the process before going to prison, to see if you are fit to serve in the labor camp.”

  The next day I was taken to a hospital in Pyongyang. Mr. Yee remarked that I was becoming a true North Korean because I was going to experience North Korea’s fine medical treatment. The hospital was clean but sparsely furnished. The dim hallways were empty, and I didn’t see any other patients around. I was introduced to one of the medical directors, a short, middle-aged woman doctor with a gentle manner. She asked me about my ulcer and examined my stomach area. I winced as she lightly pressed into my upper abdomen.

  Speaking through Mr. Baek, she explained that I needed to undergo an endoscopic procedure to look into my stomach and check for ulcers. This was familiar to me because I had gone through several stomach “scopes” in the United States. The process involved having a doctor place a thin tube down my throat into my stomach area. At the end of the tube was a small lens that sent images back to a computer monitor. I was given anesthesia during these procedures in the United States, so I never felt a thing.

  I looked around the room at the limited and outdated equipment, and suddenly became frightened that this procedure might not go the same way as the ones I’d had in the United States.

  “I’m a little nervous,” I told the director. “I’m not so sure it’s a good idea to do the scope. Will I be given anesthesia to put me under?”

  “It will feel just like it did in the United States,” she assured me.

  “Well, back home, I didn’t feel a thing because of the anesthesia. Can you make sure to give me some?” I said nervously.

  Mr. Baek, sensing my jitters, chimed in, “You really are a baby girl, aren’t you!”

  He was using the affectio
nate nickname Lisa called me in her letters, which told me he had read them. This didn’t really bother me. Mr. Baek always had such a kind, jovial way about him. I was even happy that he knew so much about my family and friends. It made me feel more connected to him.

  “Yes, I am a big baby,” I said sheepishly.

  A nurse arrived and escorted me, along with Mr. Baek, to an operating room where I was given a shot, which I was told was an anesthetic. But rather than numbing my senses, it just made me feel dizzy. I watched as a doctor prepared the instrument that would be placed inside me. It looked more like a hose than the narrow tubing I remembered from past procedures.

  A plastic apparatus was placed in my mouth to keep it lodged open. I braced myself as I saw the doctor coming toward me with the thick black tubing, which he inserted down my throat. The feeling of the instrument making its way down into my body was so agonizing it sent me writhing. Several nurses rushed to my side and pinned me down. I continued to gag in pain, unable to scream because of the plastic device. I began coughing and releasing large gusts of air through my throat.

  One by one, several doctors took turns looking down the hose into my stomach and consulting with one another while I continued to struggle on the table. Periodically they shifted the hose to look at different sections of my belly. Drops of sweat fell from my forehead. I clenched my fists together, closed my eyes, and thought of Iain. Please help me get through this, baby, I thought. Finally the doctors began pulling the hose back up and through my mouth. I sighed deeply in relief.

  After the procedure, I was led into the medical director’s office, where she was sitting with the prosecutor from the trial. I cringed at the sight of him but forced myself to bow toward him respectfully. He nodded with a slight snarl and motioned for me to take a seat. According to the medical director, my ulcer was quite serious, and I had developed several stomach lesions. She recommended that before I was sent to the labor camp, I be given a few weeks under a doctor’s supervision.

  “She doesn’t look like she’s in any pain!” the prosecutor yelled. “My wife has an ulcer and can function just fine.”

  In a calm, even-toned voice, the medical director refuted the prosecutor’s assessment and made her opinion clear. She did not think I should be sent to prison just yet. I looked at her with deep gratitude.

  “You can leave now!” the prosecutor said gruffly, waving his hands in the air. I followed Mr. Baek out of the room, where Mr. Yee was waiting to take me back to the compound.

  Afterward, Mr. Yee told me I would remain at the compound and was being placed in medical detention until I was deemed fit to go to the labor camp. I wondered if this was part of a plan to allow more time for my government to act.

  “We are not giving you any special treatment,” he said, as if reading my mind. “This is part of our legal process. Everyone sentenced to prison needs to go through a full medical checkup to see if he or she is capable of performing labor. Your medical detention is only temporary. It might last a week or longer.”

  “What about Euna?” I asked, worried that the doctors might not have found anything to prevent her from being sent to prison.

  “She is very weak,” Mr. Yee explained. “She has some arthritis. I don’t think she can go to prison. But they are still deliberating on her case. Your situation has been decided. I don’t know about hers.”

  LISA

  I WOKE UP EARLY ON June 16 to news that the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) had released details of the charges against Laura and Euna. The report indicated that both of them had admitted to engaging in criminal activity.

  The timing was interesting, given that South Korea’s president, Lee Myung-bak, happened to be visiting the United States that day and would soon be meeting with President Obama at the White House. It seemed like a deliberate attempt to upstage the highly publicized meeting. High on their list of priorities was to discuss how to deal with North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.

  The list of charges delivered on this day would surely be distracting and would remind the United States that North Korea had two of its own. Part of the KCNA statement read, “At the trial, the accused admitted that what they did were criminal acts, prompted by a political motive to isolate and stifle the socialist system of North Korea, by faking moving images aimed at falsifying its human rights performance and hurling slanders and calumnies at it.”

  I lay in bed wondering what this all meant. I e-mailed Kurt Tong and Al Gore and asked them to try to ask President Obama to treat our issue delicately if asked about it during the press conference on the White House lawn with President Lee. Gore responded that he would try to get the right language into the president’s talking points by phoning people he knew in Obama’s inner circle. I just didn’t want a repeat of the time Secretary Clinton called the charges against Laura and Euna “baseless,” publicly calling into question North Korea’s legal system.

  At the press conference, when a question was asked about the American journalists inside North Korea, President Lee responded by calling on the North Korean government to release the girls along with a South Korean Hyundai worker also being held. Mom, Iain, and I had practically affixed ourselves to the screen to hear our president. We knew his every utterance regarding North Korea was being watched and scrutinized by those holding my sister. Words mean everything. In calculatedly stern remarks, President Obama left the door open for North Korea to come back to the negotiating table.

  “There is another path available to North Korea, a path that leads to peace and economic opportunity for North Korea, including full membership in the community of nations,” President Obama said. We could only hope the North Koreans would agree to come through the door.

  Not long after the sentence was delivered, rumors had started swirling about Al Gore being sent as an intermediary to bring Laura and Euna home. The general consensus was that he would be a great choice to engage the North Koreans. But other than one interview with CNN’s John Roberts, in which he said he would do whatever it took to bring the girls home, Gore never spoke about the situation publicly. He maintained that North Korea had to be dealt with sensitively, and whatever diplomatic efforts took place had to be conducted privately. The former vice president seemed to be making progress. During our Friday conference calls with Kurt and the State Department team, we were led to believe that Gore’s people were speaking and possibly even meeting with representatives of North Korea; it was something.

  Meanwhile, it had been some time since I’d spoken with Governor Richardson. I had gone from talking to him once, sometimes twice, a day to speaking with him every week if that. After a while, he knew something was up. It was the beginning of the third week of June when I got a call from the governor.

  “I think I’m being edged out,” Governor Richardson called me to say. “I think they’re going with Al. Have you heard anything?”

  “Uh, I really haven’t heard anything specific,” I responded.

  I wasn’t lying, but I wasn’t being entirely truthful with him. I felt sick that I was straddling both camps, but I didn’t feel like I had a choice; my sister’s future was at stake. Though I know he would have helped regardless of whether or not he had been asked officially, this probably would have restored Governor Richardson to the national and world stages. I truly wished he could have had that chance. But it was becoming clearer and clearer that his role in our situation had been usurped.

  Meanwhile, on the Gore front, no one—including the former vice president—could confirm anything with absolute authority. But there at least seemed to be communication. Kurt told us that State Department sources indicated that a Gore visit was being considered, but nothing was definitive yet. We didn’t know whom the “sources” were talking to; we were just told that we would have to wait. Waiting. It’s all we seemed to be doing.

  Though our mom was an emotional wreck throughout the ordeal, at least we were all around to keep her company. During this time, Paul suggested I fly up to Sacramento to spe
nd a couple of days with my dad. He had made several trips down south to be with all of us at our mom’s house, but he had his own house to maintain and appointments to attend to back home. I noticed the toll that Laura’s absence had taken on our dad when I went for a visit. While at his house, I wrote this in a letter to Laura about him:

  …I’m sitting on Dad’s black leather couch in Sac. He has aged a lot in the last few months. He tries to be his usual silly self, but there is an emptiness about him that is undeniable. He sits and just stares out of the window for long periods of time without saying a word. When you return, we have to make more of an effort to come see him; it means the world to him….

  LAURA

  I HAD BEEN PERSISTENTLY BEGGING to call my family, and later in June I was told that in a few days I could make another set of phone calls to them. I was overjoyed. As before, Mr. Yee asked what I planned to talk about. I told him I wanted to update them on my medical condition and tell them they had to act quickly before we were sent to a labor camp.

  “Your family will want to know if you have been moved to another location,” he said. “All you need to tell them is that you are now in medical detention and being treated fine.”

  I was escorted back to the Yanggakdo Hotel with Mr. Yee and Mr. Baek. Aside from being transported to and from the trial, I had only been taken outside the compound grounds on three occasions—twice to meet with Ambassador Foyer and once to call my family. Each time the car exited the iron gate, the guard dog jumped and yelped hysterically. The hotel couldn’t have been more than a few miles from the compound because the drive seemed to last only about five or ten minutes.

  Inside the hotel conference room, Mr. Yee told me I could speak to Lisa and Iain for approximately ten to fifteen minutes, but I had to make my calls to my mother and father briefer. I dialed my mother’s number and began to choke up the second I heard a ringing tone.