by Laura Ling
LISA
I WAS CONSTANTLY THINKING of ways to get Laura and Euna released. I heard that Kim Jong Il is a big lover of Hollywood movies and that his film collection is one of the largest in the world. This made me think the Dear Leader might be impressed by some of America’s celebrity names. I’ve always been skeptical of celebrity involvement in causes because I’ve met too many “stars” who use social activism to boost their careers. But ours was a case where Hollywood stars might have more influence than politicians.
One of the performers at the Los Angeles vigil, a talented local musician named David Kater, wrote a song that was meant to rally people behind the movement to free Laura and Euna. It was a soulful piece called “Stand Together” that he composed and donated to us. It gave me an idea.
If I could get someone famous to sing the song, maybe a number of A-list film actors would participate in a music video that encouraged diplomacy and peace, and could defuse tensions between North Korea and the rest of the world. The actors would hold up signs that said things like LOVE, PEACE, DIALOGUE, etc. Months had gone by and nothing was working, so I decided this was worth a try. I phoned the Los Angeles branch of the agency that represents me, William Morris Endeavor, to ask if any of its clients would appear in the video.
“It would only take a few minutes of their time,” I said to my agent. “All they have to do is hold up a sign.”
I got positive answers from Catherine Zeta-Jones, Forest Whitaker, Keanu Reeves, and a number of others. Angelina Jolie told me by e-mail that it wasn’t something she would typically do, but she would consider being part of the video. She was very gracious and said she and Brad Pitt wanted to do what they could to help. Things were coming together. Now I had to find a singer.
Paul and I were home the night of June 24, thinking about who the best candidate would be. I wanted it to be someone recognized internationally. A few names came to mind: John Legend, John Mayer, Sheryl Crow. Then Paul suggested Michael Jackson. He was exactly the right person, but would he do it? That night, Paul downloaded “Man in the Mirror” from iTunes, and we both sat silently listening to the lyrics and Michael’s unique cadence as he sang it. I knew that our longtime family friend Gotham Chopra was very close to Michael. I planned on calling Gotham the next day and asking him if he could reach out to his friend.
On June 25, before I had time to call him, the news reported that Michael Jackson had died of a drug overdose. When I spoke to Gotham a few days later, he told me that Michael and he had spoken about Laura during their last conversation, just weeks before his death. Michael had seen the news reports of her capture and knew Gotham was a close friend of our family.
Late one night, Michael phoned him to ask if there was anything he could do to help. Gotham would describe the last time he spoke with Michael in a piece he wrote for the Huffington Post Web site. It was called “Michael Jackson and Kim Jong Il.”
In it, Gotham wrote:
He [Michael] asked me whether I had had any contact with Laura. I told him I had written her a few letters and had been assured they were getting through. Outside of that, her own family had only heard from her twice—brief monitored phone calls—in the over three months they had been imprisoned. When I told him that, Michael paused. “Do you think,” he said hesitantly, “that the leader of North Korea could be a fan of mine?”
According to Gotham, Michael wondered if Kim Jong Il knew of his music. He told Gotham that if the North Korean leader did like him, and if it would help, he would go to the Communist state to perform for him. That chance would never come.
I HADN’T DONE ANYTHING work-related in more than three months, but toward the end of June, I decided to take on a couple of assignments. It was nearly impossible to report stories when the most important one to me was happening in my own family.
Although I am an exclusive correspondent for The Oprah Winfrey Show, they can’t feature my segments every day, so they allow me to do some reporting for a couple of other media outlets. Before Laura’s capture, I had started working on another National Geographic documentary about, of all things, the colossal spike in kidnappings in Phoenix, Arizona, as a result of the violence spilling over from Mexico. A big investigation was going down with the Phoenix Police Department, and my producer asked if I’d like to be part of it. I agreed, knowing that if anything were to happen with Laura’s situation, I could be on a plane within hours.
I arrived in Phoenix from Los Angeles at 8:00 A.M., and the investigation was already under way. Hours earlier, a young man in his twenties named Paco had been pulled out of his truck, beaten up, and abducted. In his vehicle was Paco’s terrified four-year-old son, who saw everything. After securing information from witnesses in the area, the investigations team reconvened at the police station, and Paco’s family and girlfriend were called in. Deeply distressed and forlorn, they were all put into a room to wait to see if Paco’s kidnappers would call to ask for a ransom. I was told that this is normal procedure: when someone is abducted, often the kidnappers call the family members within twenty-four to forty-eight hours to demand money for the release. If a call came, the Phoenix Police Department would be ready for it.
Hours went by with no word. The cops let me take Paco’s girlfriend into another room to see if she would agree to be interviewed. Her name was Sandra, and she was a wreck. Her eyes were puffy red, and black eyeliner was smudged all over her face from crying and wiping away the tears. She was wearing what appeared to be slippers. She must have left her house immediately upon learning of Paco’s abduction and hadn’t had a chance to change clothes.
As I watched her sob in anguish, I felt like I was looking at myself. I knew exactly what she was feeling. For months I had been asking similar questions about my little sister. Where in the hell was she? What happened? Will I ever see her again?
I started to cry. Sandra looked up at me in confusion. I told her I was the one whose sister was being held in North Korea—she knew the story right away. And then I embraced her. I could feel her body shaking as I held her. We stood crying and holding each other for what seemed like ten minutes. Our circumstances were so different but similar at the same time. The biggest difference, though, was that I knew that Laura was alive. I couldn’t say the same for Paco.
The two of us came out after about thirty minutes and walked into a room filled with police officers. This time, we both had black, smeared eyeliner all over our faces. My producer asked me if Sandra had agreed to talk on camera. I looked at him and in a quiet voice replied, “No.”
A week later, I took an assignment from ABC’s Nightline, for which I am a regular contributor. A charter school organization had recently taken over Locke High School, the reputed “toughest school in L.A.,” located smack-dab in the middle of the warring gang territories of South Central Los Angeles. A riot had broken out on the Locke campus the previous summer that involved six hundred students. The Green Dot Public Schools charter program came in the next year and imposed a dress code and stabilized the security situation.
All the residents in the surrounding neighborhoods, including the many children, had witnessed or experienced some kind of violence while living in the area. My crew and I shot video and interviews on campus and then ventured out to film around the neighborhoods that envelop Locke High School. Gangs mark their territory by spraying graffiti that covers all the walls, storefronts, and food trucks in the vicinity. These were places that cops would advise people not to visit at night, especially not alone. Some years ago, South Central Los Angeles was considered the homicide capital of the United States. Even in the middle of the day, we were seeing drug deals in progress on multiple street corners, and prostitutes were combing the boulevards for johns.
As I was interviewing a high school student on his street, a strung-out, scantily clad woman who was clearly “working” stopped what she was doing and began to stare at me. I felt a bit uneasy about where I was, and my heart started beating faster. She continued to glare, and then all of
a sudden at the top of her lungs she screamed, “Lisa Ling, is that you? Where’s your sister, girl?”
There I was in the middle of the “hood,” and this woman was asking about Laura. I was moved to speechlessness. I smiled and yelled back, “We still don’t know.”
“I’m praying for her, girl!” she replied.
Then, no less than five minutes later, a tall, very thin man who looked homeless appeared and began to walk toward me. He looked me up and down before saying, “Hey, have you found your sister? I’ve been praying for her.”
I was in a part of Los Angeles known for violence and mayhem; these were streets where killings occurred regularly, but on that day it felt like home to me. These people, whose lives could not be more different from mine, were saying prayers for my sister despite their obviously challenging predicaments. The reactions I was getting from people from so many different walks of life told me that our story was one that people seemed to rally around. I deeply appreciated the support—and I needed it.
CHAPTER EIGHT
glimmers of hope
LAURA
OFTEN, WHEN PARIS WASN’T in the room, one of the other guards would go through her belongings, curiously inspecting objects that were foreign to her. She would apply Paris’s mascara to her own lashes, flip through her Czech language book, and dab Paris’s foundation onto her skin.
One day Paris left her cell phone in the room unattended. Captivated by the small black gizmo, the wide-eyed guard picked it up gingerly, pressed her stubby fingers onto the buttons, and unintentionally turned off the phone. Confused, she shook the gadget up and down, trying to wake it up. I could see she was getting nervous; Paris could walk into the room at any moment and see her handling the prized possession. Suddenly the panicky guard turned to me, approached, and held the phone out. I was apprehensive about taking it from her in case Paris entered the room and thought I was trying to call someone. But the guard pressed the phone into my hand with a look of desperation. I grabbed the object, wishing I could indeed dial my sister’s number and hear her sweet voice. I pressed the green telephone icon, holding the button down long enough for the phone to come on, and quickly returned it to the guard, who rushed back to her area and placed the phone back where it belonged. Within moments, Paris returned. The guard innocently turned the pages of her tattered book, pretending to be engrossed in its story.
Like the two guards, Paris was cold and curt with me when I first met her. But rather than staring at me endlessly as the two guards did, Paris seemed uninterested in my existence. My presence seemed more of a nuisance to her than anything else. She was brought in to interpret for me, not necessarily to guard me, and her uppity attitude conveyed her higher sense of being.
One day I asked if she knew why I was being held in medical detention.
“Of course I know. Everyone in the country knows. It was all over the news,” she replied.
I wondered how the government news readers had characterized me and my crimes. “So, what do the people say about my colleague and me? How do they feel about us?” I asked.
“It’s not like people talk about your situation in the streets, but they are aware of what you did, and no one is happy about it.”
I was hesitant to talk about our documentary for fear that I would be accused of trying to brainwash her. Instead, I said only, “When I was arrested, I was working on a documentary about people who leave North Korea. I wanted to help these people and bring greater awareness to the situation of those who are suffering. I know people here believe I had hostile intentions. I just want you to know that I am sorry if my actions could have hurt anybody.”
She listened intently. “The rest of the world thinks that North Korea is a horrible place,” she said passionately. “And you probably won’t believe me when I tell you that we really like living here. We are very proud of our country and what we have been able to achieve.”
I couldn’t help but think she was speaking for the elite group like herself who have cell phones and MP3 players.
“We don’t like living without electricity and water,” she went on. “We know we are not a rich country. But it is the United States that has put sanctions on us and has deprived us of these things. What did we ever do to the United States?” Paris wasn’t the only person I’d spoken with who blamed the U.S. sanctions for North Korea’s lack of electricity. This was a common theme discussed by my other guards and Mr. Yee. To them, every blackout—and they happen multiple times a day—reminds them of the evil U.S. enemy that is trying to hold North Korea down. I could understand the immense pride the people of North Korea feel about their nuclear program, which in their eyes is a step toward becoming a self-sufficient, powerful nation.
“I do hope our two countries can become friends over time,” I said.
“I believe you,” Paris replied forgivingly.
LISA
IT HAD BEEN WEEKS since we’d heard anything about the activities Al Gore was engaged in. Every few days I’d shoot an e-mail to him and Kurt asking if they had heard anything. I kept getting variations on the same response: “no,” “nothing yet,” “no new news.”
It appeared that whatever communication was under way with North Korea had gone dark. The discussions we thought were taking place seemed to have ceased entirely. Some of those advising me, with knowledge of North Korean etiquette, told me that nonresponsiveness was their way of saying no. In other words, it was becoming increasingly apparent that sending Al Gore to North Korea was not going to happen. This was perhaps one of the most frustrating periods of the whole ordeal.
If former Vice President Gore had been rejected, what could the North Koreans possibly want? We had reached an impasse. We were starting to feel doomed. My sister and Euna were the first Americans ever to be tried in North Korea’s Supreme Court. They were the first Americans to be sentenced to serve time in a labor prison. Was it possible that they would be the first Americans to actually have to carry out their sentence?
Toward the end of June, an actress I know referred me to an international businessman of Chinese descent who travels in and out of Pyongyang regularly. I can’t use his real name, because anything having to do with North Korea engenders suspicion. Here I’ll call him Robert Hong. His résumé reads like a page out of a capitalist manifesto. He claims expertise in a plethora of areas, including tax consulting, gaming, telecom, media mining, financial services, property development, biotech, entertainment, and banking. He claims to hold official positions with four governments and is consulted by presidents, prime ministers, and other state leaders who value his advice.
I reached him by phone a couple of weeks before he was to make another trip to Pyongyang. He told me he would be flying there from Beijing for a series of meetings that would take place over the course of twenty-five hours. After several conversations with him, I still couldn’t get a grasp of what he was actually going there to do. He told me he had some international investors interested in pouring millions of dollars into the Communist state. I asked him if he could help us. For a fee, he told me, he could persuade those holding the girls to release them—he was fairly certain of it. He said that doing it his way would yield far better results than if we continued to wait for governments to communicate. That, he said, would take forever.
“This is how you do things there,” Robert said. “If you wait for the U.S. government, it will never get done. The situation is too bad right now. We should try to get them out quietly.”
I didn’t know what kind of money we were talking about, and I didn’t ask. I figured that if he were successful, I would find a way to repay him, even if it meant that our family had to sell everything we owned.
On July 6, Robert sent me a text saying that he was leaving Beijing for Pyongyang and that he would reach me as soon as he got out.
LAURA
THE NEW MAN IN CHARGE, whom the judge referred to as my “guarantor,” did not take walks with me outside, but I was allowed to walk along one side of the bu
ilding under the supervision of my guards for thirty minutes each day. At first I misunderstood where the boundaries were and continued to walk along the perimeter of an off-limits area. My guards must have been confused as well, because they continued to let me wander. Suddenly I heard the guarantor shouting at me to turn around. Paris rushed over and told me I was not permitted in any area beyond the short length of one specific wall. My curiosity was piqued, and I became convinced that Euna was being held on the other side of the building. I pretended to cough loudly, hoping she might hear me and know I was nearby.
As I jogged back and forth within the permitted area, I noticed some workers installing a set of floodlights around the perimeter of the building. It seemed they were increasing the security of the area.
BEFORE THE TRIAL I had been receiving batches of letters every week or two. But under my new supervisors, I hadn’t received any letters in almost a month. I was desperate for information from back home and news of any progress. I repeatedly asked the guards if there were any letters for me, but my inquiries went unanswered.
The discomfort in my abdomen continued to worsen. It felt as if knives were stabbing me in my lower stomach area. I threw up every bite of food that I ate, and a doctor was called upon to see me. The doctor was a gentle woman who appeared to be in her late fifties. She continued to conduct regular checkups on me once, sometimes twice, a week. I looked forward to her visits because they were an opportunity to interact with another person, even if it was just to talk about my health. I told her about my pains as well as my inability to sleep at night. She determined that I had a mild appendicitis and prescribed some antibiotics as well as diazepam, an older form of Valium, to help me sleep. The guards would administer the medication to me each day to make sure I wasn’t taking more than the allowed dosage. Each night when the guards cranked up the volume on the television while watching the evening’s Korean War flick, I popped a diazepam and drifted away.