Somewhere Inside

by Laura Ling

  I had never been alerted to this early action by Kerry’s team or anyone else. As the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kerry was uniquely positioned to represent an official imprimatur to a rescue mission, without actually being an official of the Obama administration. Jannuzi told me that Senator Kerry was “personally engaged in the issue” and had even called Minister Kim himself to impress upon the North Korean government the importance of allowing the girls to be released as a pathway forward in the U.S.–North Korean relationship.

  During a follow-up conversation in June, Minister Kim told Jannuzi that Pyongyang was still considering a Kerry visit. Jannuzi retorted, “But don’t invite us if you’re about to do something else bad.”

  Then on July 4, America’s Independence Day, North Korea launched a series of Scud-type ballistic missiles that provoked condemnation from surrounding nations as well as from the United States and the United Nations Security Council. A few weeks later, when things had calmed down after the missile test, Minister Kim personally called Jannuzi out of the blue to talk about a Kerry visit. North Korea’s government had accepted Kerry’s proposal and was prepared to welcome him to Pyongyang. And they wanted a visit to happen soon, as early as July 24, three days from then!

  This was shocking to me, and I didn’t understand what it all meant. First there was my sister’s message—confirmed by State Department sources—that the envoy had to be Bill Clinton or no one. And now Jannuzi was telling me that not only had a Kerry visit been accepted, but the North Koreans wanted him to come immediately.

  For a couple of reasons, Senator Kerry could not go to Pyongyang on that early date. First, there were important votes taking place in the Senate. The Senate recess did not commence until August 7 and he could not go in advance of that date. Second, Senator Kerry was still trying to secure sufficient assurances from Pyongyang that his visit would be successful. Jannuzi asked me to keep all of this quiet, but how could I? If the North Koreans were ready to accept Kerry in three days and this was a window of opportunity to finally get my sister and Euna out of North Korea, I had to make damn well sure someone was on a plane.

  I left a frantic message for Kurt on his cell phone as well as through e-mail. He was on assignment in Southeast Asia, and it was the middle of the night his time. He phoned me as soon as he woke up, which for me was the afternoon of July 21.

  “Kurt, you know that I have held to a strict level of discretion throughout this process, right?” I asked. “Well, I am divulging some highly confidential information because of my sister’s situation, but I have to know if this is true or not.”

  I told Kurt that someone in Senator Kerry’s office had told me the North Koreans had accepted a visit from the senator and originally asked if he could be on a plane as soon as July 24.

  “If this is an opening, if it’s a window, we can’t let it pass us by,” I urged.

  Kurt knew I was talking about Frank Jannuzi, but he didn’t know that Kerry had been told he could come, and so soon. I told Kurt that Kerry couldn’t go on the day the North Koreans put forward because of his obligations to the Senate. But, I wondered out loud, “If the North Koreans are saying now is the time for someone, maybe they want Clinton immediately.”

  “How can we expedite this, Kurt?” I asked. “Whom can I call?”

  “I think you should call Gore,” he replied. “He has more of a direct line to the White House than I do.”

  I hung up the phone with Kurt and called Al Gore right away. I again uttered the disclaimer about conveying sensitive information, but my sister was in danger and time was ticking away. Gore was surprised to hear the information about Senator Kerry. The Kerry route was a real tangent for those of us who had been following a certain path for so long. I could hear frustration in his voice. He had spent an exhaustive amount of time working on this and volunteering to go to Pyongyang. Now there were multiple names of acceptable envoys being tossed around.

  I was again in the middle of a surreal situation.

  President Clinton, Vice President Gore, Senator John Kerry, Governor Bill Richardson, these were some of the most powerful figures in American politics and society and here I was engaging them and their people regularly about taking a trip to the most secretive state on earth to try to rescue my sister. Plus, I was divulging private conversations concerning them. But I had to.

  On July 22, I called Frank Jannuzi first thing in the morning to find out if he had learned anything new. He had. He told me that as of 11:00 P.M. the day before, senior officials at the National Security Council (NSC) had tentatively signed off on the Kerry visit.

  “It’s good news, Lisa,” he exclaimed. “The White House is ninety percent convinced that we will return with your sister and Euna. They believe we are further along in our efforts to achieve success than their other options.”

  Jannuzi said they would be taking a doctor with them to check the health of the girls and that Minister Kim had confirmed an August 10 departure from the United States, with an August 11 arrival in Pyongyang.

  But according to Jannuzi, the White House was still considering other options for an envoy. Of course, I knew of at least one of the people the Oval Office was contemplating, but I wasn’t sure if Jannuzi or Senator Kerry had any idea that Bill Clinton was being considered. I had not revealed to Jannuzi that Laura asked specifically for Clinton and I never would because I had to keep that information top secret. Although senior NSC officials were backing a Kerry visit, Jannuzi said there might be other people who could get in sooner. Jannuzi didn’t seem to know exactly who was being considered, but he said Kerry wasn’t interested in obstructing a White House mission if someone else could go immediately and get the job done.

  “We told the White House, if you can get someone on the ground sooner, do it!” Jannuzi said.

  The John Kerry option was unexpected, but welcome nonetheless. Though the date being suggested, August 10, was later than we had hoped, it was an actual date. It was more definitive than anything else we’d had previously.

  LAURA

  I LOOKED FORWARD to the thirty minutes when I was allowed outside each day. I would take in the fresh air, stretch my bones, and jog along the short length of the compound wall. I often closed my eyes and imagined I was back home, running along the streets of my neighborhood in Los Angeles.

  On rainy days, my guards wouldn’t let me go outdoors. I begged them to let me out so I could feel the cool drops on my skin, but they always refused. I’d never been a person who likes to get wet in the rain, but I yearned for it after being denied contact with the natural elements for so long. One day it began to drizzle while I was jogging, and the guards ordered me inside. I stopped right where I was, lifted my face to the gray sky, and let the droplets of rain mingle with my tears. Surprisingly, the guards stood back and let me have this moment.

  The guarantor was really the only man I ever saw in the compound, but I knew others were around because at night I heard their booming voices singing karaoke from within the building. Sometimes, while I lay in bed, I could hear their inebriated voices yelling as loudly as they could. But it wasn’t just the men; the female guards who were off duty joined in with the singing, and didn’t come back to the room until well past midnight.

  EVEN THOUGH I KNEW Lisa was trying to get Bill Clinton to serve as an envoy to rescue us, I was beginning to accept my sentence and resolve myself to being sent to prison. To prepare for this, I began working hard to keep up my strength so I could withstand whatever hard labor was required of me. I did extra push-ups, sit-ups, and yoga stretches each night. I meditated throughout the day, finding comfort in the sound of each breath.

  But sleeping was always difficult. I eagerly accepted a sleeping tablet each night from the guard. When I tried to sleep without the aid of any drugs, I found myself restless and irritable. My mind would race with thoughts of my family. I worried about their health and mental condition. From the photos Iain had scanned onto his letters I could see that
he was getting thinner. He had an emptiness in his eyes. I clutched onto his T-shirt at night as if it was a security blanket. Sometimes when I was able to drift off, I’d jolt myself awake moments later in a panic, searching to make sure his T-shirt was nearby.

  LISA

  IT WAS HARD to imagine that things could become even more bizarre, but July 23 came along, and sure enough, they did. I awoke that morning to the news that an exchange had occurred overnight at a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Phuket, Thailand. Secretary Hillary Clinton was there, along with representatives from all the Asian nations, including North Korea. In reference to North Korea’s defiance of the global community in its testing of a nuclear device, Secretary Clinton made this statement: “Maybe it’s the mother in me or the experience that I’ve had with small children and unruly teenagers and people who are demanding attention—don’t give it to them, they don’t deserve it, they are acting out.”

  Even though many would agree with Secretary Clinton’s characterization of North Korea’s actions, her statement did not go unnoticed, nor was it left unaddressed, by the North Korean foreign minister, who was at the conference. He fired back by saying, “We cannot but regard Mrs. Clinton as a funny lady as she likes to utter such rhetoric, unaware of the elementary etiquette in the international community. Sometimes she looks like a primary schoolgirl and sometimes a pensioner going shopping.”

  Was I reading the logs of a primary-school principal or statements of diplomats at an international conference? A “pensioner going shopping”? What did that even mean?

  The U.S. secretary of state had just been verbally belittled on the world stage by a tiny renegade country that was insisting behind the scenes that her husband was the only one they’d welcome to negotiate the release of my sister and Euna! Was this for real? What did it all mean? Did the North Koreans want to dig the knife in deeper by saying Bill Clinton or no one? Bill and Hillary Clinton may have been plagued by gossip and speculation, but one word was always used to describe their relationship: loyal. Would Bill Clinton even consider meeting with a government that likened his wife to a schoolgirl? It was both utterly absurd and devastatingly real. That’s when I decided I needed to do whatever I had to do to get in touch with President Clinton. If I could just talk to him, I could convey how desperate we were to get my sister back.

  LAURA

  DESPITE MY EFFORTS to stay healthy, I developed some sort of stomach virus that prevented me from keeping down any food. It didn’t feel like one of my typical ulcer pains. I was also stricken with an eye infection that caused the vision in my right eye to be blurred. When I came down with a high fever, the doctor was summoned along with a nurse. I felt like a pincushion as they began poking me with needles and injecting me with what they said was medicine to stop the nausea, reduce the fever, and calm my nerves. I was too weak to care. I could barely keep my eyes open. I was relieved to know they were trying to keep me alive and well. I took this as a sign that I was still worth something to them.

  The vomiting had left me dehydrated and undernourished, and the doctor wanted to hook me up to an intravenous drip. The bottle of fluid needed to be elevated, so the guards went to work stacking a clothes rack onto a box, which was placed on top of a pile of books on a small table. The bottle was then secured to the rack with a sock. The rickety, makeshift contraption was an example of how, with limited resources, North Koreans have become adept at making do with what they have. I often saw the guards tinkering with the wires of broken extension cords, trying to get them to work for just a little bit longer. When the television set failed, they carefully adjusted different cables until the image appeared again, albeit fuzzier than before.

  The nurse injected the fluid into my right arm, and the doctor wrapped me like a mummy in a thick blanket, hoping this would reduce my fever. In my delirium, I pulled my other hand out of the cocoon, feeling around for Iain’s T-shirt. The doctor sensed what I wanted, reached over for the T-shirt, placed it in my hand, and put my arm back in the blanket.

  I fell into a deep sleep for several hours. When I awoke, the doctor and nurse were in the same seats they’d been in when I’d drifted off. I smiled at them gratefully and thanked them for their help. Although I was dripping with sweat from being swathed in the thick blanket, my fever was still running high. The nurse replaced the IV fluid bottle with a new one and rubbed my arm to relieve the numbness.

  “Do you get this kind of treatment in the United States?” the doctor asked me.

  “We have very nice doctors like you,” I responded.

  “But if you get sick, do they come to your home, at any hour, any day of the week, and give you treatment?”

  “No. Of course not. We have many problems with health care in the United States. It can be difficult to get treatment, and there are too many people who are unable to get the care that they need.”

  “In the DPRK, everyone receives treatment, no matter what,” she said, beaming.

  Paris chimed in proudly, “It’s true. When I am sick, I can always see a doctor.”

  Like Mr. Yee, who often criticized capitalism for creating what he saw as a social and economic gap between the rich and the poor, Paris and the doctor were quick to denounce the U.S. government for not providing services to all. They seemed to find no fault with their own regime, which has left millions of people hungry. I wondered if they really believed all the propaganda about North Korea’s perfect society.

  A few hours later, Paris again commented on the good care I was receiving. “Wow!” she said. “You are being treated like the Dear Leader Kim Jong Il’s wife. No one I know would get such care!”

  As Paris and the doctor continued to extol the virtues of their health-care system, I thought back on Lisa’s documentary about North Korea and the hundreds of people who showed up to be seen by a foreign doctor. Paris was right. I probably was receiving the kind of treatment that was unattainable by the average North Korean citizen.

  The doctor and the nurse returned over the next two days to administer more fluids. I was so fatigued and incoherent that when Paris handed me another batch of letters from home, I could barely muster the strength to open the envelope. My eye infection had worsened, and I could barely see out of my right eye. Lying in bed, I sorted through the letters, found Lisa’s and Iain’s, and put the others aside to read later when I had more energy. I brought the letters close up to my face and concentrated hard on making out Lisa’s words. “Do not be discouraged, there is a lot of movement in the effort to bring you home…Your request has proven to be quite complicated, as I thought it would be. Though we are still working very hard on it, it presents challenges on so many levels,” wrote Lisa.

  In a letter from Iain, he told me about a remark Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had made at the Association for Southeast Asian Nations Regional Forum in Thailand, where she likened the North Korean government to “unruly children.” The North Koreans responded by calling her a “funny lady” who sometimes resembles a “primary schoolgirl.” This was not good news for our case, but I didn’t get angry or scared, probably because I was so drugged up that I was unusually calm.

  I thought back on the four months I’d spent in captivity. There were nuclear tests, tightened sanctions, and now high-school-style name-calling. No wonder the two countries have been unable to find any common ground for decades. All I could do was laugh. I tossed the letters aside, as my laughter gave way to tears and I drifted back into a black daze.

  LISA

  RIGHT AWAY I REACHED OUT to a friend with close ties to Bill Clinton and asked if he could let the former president know about my sister’s request. My friend agreed, and the next morning he called to tell me that Clinton was aware of the request.

  “Tell Lisa that I will do my best to help in any way I can,” my friend said, quoting Clinton.

  I was told that the former president first wanted to talk to Secretary Clinton, who was returning from Asia in twenty-four hours. That same day, A
l Gore phoned to tell me that he too had personally called Bill Clinton to ask for his help and that the former president had agreed.

  “Let’s just hope this is it,” Gore said, clearly exasperated.

  If the secretary of state was fine with sending her husband to North Korea, the one person in the world who could actually approve this visit was the current president. Through some of my contacts in the government, I learned that a few people in the Obama White House were concerned that a Bill Clinton visit might be too big a prize for a country that had so brazenly defied the United Nations. The United Nations Security Council’s decision to punish North Korea for its renegade behavior was unprecedented. The secretive state had just been delivered a reprimand by the world community in the form of crushing sanctions. The White House seemed to be looking for ways to eliminate any possibility that adverse political consequences would result from such a high-level visit. I had also heard that President Clinton had not spoken with President Obama since the election, months ago.

  The days that passed were agonizingly long ones. How could we convince President Obama to approve a visit by President Clinton to a country that was acting so unruly? A year earlier, I had met President Obama’s sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, and her husband, Konrad, when I spoke at La Pietra Hawaii School for Girls, where Maya is a history teacher. A mutual friend took the Ngs and me to dinner at a local Japanese noodle house. Maya and I hit it off right away. We spent much of the night talking about an issue we both feel passionate about: the sexual trafficking of young girls. I admired her intensity and her intelligence. During Laura’s captivity, Maya and Konrad had checked in with me a few times to offer support. I never asked any favors of Maya, but I needed one now. I called to ask her if she could pass the following letter along to her brother, as he was the only person who could help us.