Now that Al Gore’s two jailed employees have been retrieved by Bill Clinton from North Korea, there’s talk of a seven-figure book deal for their story, with the U.K’s Daily Mail speculating about a movie deal to follow. It would be interesting to hear in full the tale of Laura Ling and Euna Lee. But from the little we have heard so far, it seems at least one of them – Laura Ling — did deliberately cross into North Korea.
This was folly of enormous magnitude. That act has already cost Americans, by way of winning for Kim Jong Il the propaganda coup of snapping his fingers and having a former U.S. president jet in for an audience with Kim in Pyongyang. Whether additional ransom or concessions to Kim were involved, we wait to find out — but it would come as no surprise. Did Ling and Lee, both described as journalists, not notice that the border in the area where they were traveling is edged every few hundred yards with sentry huts, manned by armed North Korean guards?
While no one deserves the terror of being subjected to North Korea’s version of “justice,” there is something that feels simply wrong about the prospect that the two women, now safely home, stand to make a killing out of their story. In the end, they got out; it is less clear whether some of their contacts in China were so lucky. Veteran North Korea-watcher Joshua Stanton notes on his terrifically informative blog, One Free Korea , that among activists helping North Korean refugees, there’s big concern that materials Ling and Lee had on them when they were captured might have led to North Korean refugees being nabbed in China and sent back to North Korea. These folks cannot expect the relatively soft handling which Kim apparently reserved for his American prisoners; nor can they expect Bill Clinton to race back over in his private jet and airlift them out to sell their book and movie rights.
And whatever the details, the basic arithmetic here is that anything which helps fortify the Kim Jong Il regime is bad news inside the borders of North Korea — where Kim’s gulag carries on, with its starvation rations and murderous sentences of hard labor.
In another illuminating post, put up April 7th, Stanton ran through a list of what we might reasonably expect from Ling and Lee, now that they are home. This included the advice:
“If you did cross the border voluntarily, mortgage your homes now and start writing checks to repay the taxpayers for whatever your ransom cost us.”
That sounds reasonable. Though in light of the talk now circulating about a payola of book and movie deals, I have another suggestion. It would be entirely fitting for Laura Ling and Euna Lee to donate whatever money they make from their story to some of the private charitable organizations whose staff — often at considerable sacrifice — dedicate themselves to genuinely helping the North Korean refugees whom these two women set out to write about.
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29 Comments
1. Pajamas Media » Big Bucks for the Ex-Prisoners of Pyongyang?:[...] the entire story here [...]
Aug 10, 2009 - 3:18 pm 2. InTheKnow:Do we really care what they have to say about their “vacation” in N Korea. I’m quite sure they were not subjected to the same kind of treatment that some poor schmuck would recieve under similar conditions, after all the N Koreans had to have known that the brave leaders that we now have in power would have wreacked havoc on them had they been harmed!
Aug 10, 2009 - 3:32 pm 3. Now and Then:What happened to the free-market imperative? What about the moral high ground of capitalism? Got problem with liberals profiting from the system?
Aug 10, 2009 - 4:51 pm 4. greenberry:The Us should have an automatic $100,000 on any proceeds or advance from any book/movie/newspaper or other media proceeds payable to them directly or indirectly that relate in any way to said event, and on any tax refund, lottery winning, or compensation paid by any such country to them.
Aug 10, 2009 - 5:31 pm 5. Ellen K:Since Al Gore sent his two employees into harms way and in doing so incurred a great deal of debt in the form of air flights, etc, maybe Al Gore should pony up the costs of the operation. After all, he’s not a VP anymore.
Aug 10, 2009 - 5:51 pm 6. Amy:Oh, come on, any private citizen, regardless of political views would absolutely write a book about this experience. I’m glad we got those girls back, though I can assure you that the fact that Al Gore is their boss guarantees that they and I are polar opposites politically. Rescuing American citizens from a brutal regime is the kind of thing I don’t mind my taxes being spent on.
Aug 10, 2009 - 6:50 pm 7. NurseZac:Let Al Gore pay for everything with the money he has personally made off of those phoney “global warming” schemes and companies.
Aug 10, 2009 - 6:53 pm 8. AtheistConservative:“What happened to the free-market imperative? What about the moral high ground of capitalism? Got problem with liberals profiting from the system?”
What happened to free speech? What about the moral high ground of speaking out against that which you feel is improper?
The difference between Conservatives and left-wingers is Conservatives speak out about what they oppose and don’t generally cry for Big Brother to come and make it all okay. I realize that, hanging out with lefties all the time, this seems foreign to you. But try to get with the program.
“Rescuing American citizens from a brutal regime is the kind of thing I don’t mind my taxes being spent on.”
Do you mind your country’s respectability and efficacy as a world leader being ’spent’ on it? Because that’s what happened.
I feel sorry for people taken hostage when doing nothing wrong. I do not feel sorry for people who purposely went into North Korea, against the advice of all officials, in order to get a ’scoop’ for their network. These women are not heroes.
Aug 10, 2009 - 8:10 pm 9. Bogdan of Australia:Now and Then is displaying a typical parasitic mind. “Liberals” profit from the “system” only when they steal other people’s money and mostly waste it.
Aug 10, 2009 - 8:16 pm 10. Horace Wells:Skip this book, let’s get the Palin book, I’m sure that is a masterpiece of literary prose as well as political theory.
Aug 10, 2009 - 9:12 pm 11. David Thomson:There is one thing you probably can take for granted regarding any proposed movie or book: it will lose money! Think about it for a moment. Who would buy it? I have long suspected that the leftist elites have encouraged film makers and publishers to take a tax lost in order to reward their “heroes.” The story concerning these reckless young ladies deserves a newspaper or magazine article. Nothing more. Their experience was almost certainly atypical. They most assuredly were handled with kid gloves. At most, they were made to feel uncomfortable and placed on a mild diet. Why give a damn? Most Korean political prisoners often have to eat the undigested food found in the excrement of cows.
Aug 10, 2009 - 10:13 pm 12. DavidN:I have to say that I’m shrugging in disinterest at this whole issue. Yes, it wasn’t that bright of the women to get caught crossing the border to North Korea. However, does anyone really think that if someone stepped across the border of pretty much any other country in the world, they’d have been sentenced to 12 years hard labor? Of course not. Were they a bit dumb? Sure…Does that justify the sentences? Of course not, and their retrieval is a good thing.
I don’t really care about their book(s) any more than I care about most books like this. I’ve worked in bookstores, and such things usually do sell well for a very short period, then fall of abruptly. Either the publisher prints too many, and winds up with copies he can’t get rid of, or he doesn’t print enough, and has demand that he can’t fulfill (which fades before he can print more copies). Who cares? They’ll get juicy advances, and probably buy a bigger house, maybe a car, hopefully put aside some money for the one lady’s child’s college. Maybe they’ll take a trip somewhere safer. Whatever.
As to who pays for what: Al and his friends might be responsible, but who paid when that U.S. News reporter got arrested for espionage by the Soviets late in the Cold War? Somehow I suspect we were all on the hook for whatever that cost. As for the real cost, I don’t think we’ll know if Kim extracted anything else from the Obama administration for years yet. The guy is goofy enough he may have just wanted that pic with Clinton, and not cared about anything else. I’ll agree that the administration *might* have made other concessions…but we’re not going to know, for certain, for some time. Speculating in the meanwhile is at least a bit irresponsible.
Aug 10, 2009 - 11:31 pm 13. Miriam Jakubowitz:I am still wondering what was in all of the luggage they had? When they were leaving on Bing’s plane, it appeared as though they were coming back from a vacation. They weren’t were they??????????????????
Aug 11, 2009 - 1:43 am 14. seansarto:Sensing a possible trend in the “free-market system”, a few of the “liberal” Chino prison rioters have sent their resumes to Al Gore in hopes of banking on the “2010″ immigration reform with potential movie deals…
Aug 11, 2009 - 2:54 am 15. Tao Jones:Like the skiers and hikers who decide to go out of bounds despite warnings not to, then have to be rescued at great public expense, these ‘girls’ pretending to be journalists were saved by adults who know better (and I don’t mean Clinton / Gore).
One wonders if they even know (much less care about) the enormous political cost with which they have saddled the free world because of their childish arrogance.
Maybe the great and powerful OzOne can explain it to them… perhaps over a wine cooler in the Rose Garden.
Aug 11, 2009 - 5:47 am 16. Paul in MI:“That act has already cost Americans, by way of winning for Kim Jong Il the propaganda coup of snapping his fingers and having a former U.S. president jet in for an audience with Kim in Pyongyang.”
Is this really that big of a deal for Kim? By the standards of North Korean propaganda this seems pretty tame. They already get told he hits several holes-in-one every time he plays golf and that he can control the weather with his mind. Nobody outside NK believes anything the NK government says and everyone inside is so stewed in propaganda that it makes no difference.
On the subject of the article it is ridiculous that they could get rich from this but what’s the alternative? The only way to remedy that situation is to put unacceptable limitations on freedom of speech or free enterprise.
Aug 11, 2009 - 6:26 am 17. Moho:Yeah, but Kenneth Gladney should sue the hell out of St. Louis County!
Aug 11, 2009 - 7:08 am 18. Paul -Indiana:The proceeds from a book should be used to reimburse our government for the expenses in obtaining their release. After that, they get the money which remains.
Aug 11, 2009 - 7:55 am 19. Carlos Caliente:There will be talk show interviews, C.B.S. will do a television special, a book will be written, there will be book signing tours, and North Korea will convert to Christianity. All very predictable, and I want to get a piece of the action, I don’t give a hoot about right or wrong, who is good or evil, I just want to be able to do the voice over on the documentary and products promotions commercials. God Bless the American way !!!
Aug 11, 2009 - 9:22 am 20. grossecaisse:If they violated Korean laws willfully they should still be in prison.
Aug 11, 2009 - 9:44 am 21. biblio44:“That act has already cost Americans, by way of winning for Kim Jong Il the propaganda coup of snapping his fingers and having a former U.S. president jet in for an audience with Kim in Pyongyang.”
It doesn’t come close to the coup Kim Jong Il achieved when Bush took N. Korea off the terrorist list.
Aug 11, 2009 - 11:41 am 22. Scott:Grossecaisse is in fact correct. While the laws and penalties of NK may be harsh and unfair they are the law of the land. If in fact they we caught in NK illegally then TBH they broke the law. Should we do the same for a US citizen who gets caught smuggling heroin into GB, France, Spain, or Australia?
We’ve rewarded stupidity again at great cost…
Aug 11, 2009 - 11:43 am 23. TexRobert:Doesn’t it really depend on whether the CIA can rely on the information they were sent to get? If yes, they never be able to do another spy mission and should get compensation; if no, why reward them?
Aug 11, 2009 - 12:29 pm 24. The 64,000 Won Question « Liberate North Korea:[...] Claudia Rosett – an in-house journalist for the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies – made the rather preposterous suggestion that Ling and Lee should donate the entirety of expected [...]
Aug 11, 2009 - 1:22 pm 25. mojo:How about a nice headline?
“Al ‘Big Green’ Gore’s Dilettante ‘Reporters’ Get Human Rights Activists Killed”
Works for me.
Aug 11, 2009 - 1:48 pm 26. Gary Ogletree:I suspect the whole fiasco was planned in advance by Clinton and Gore. Nothing rings true about the episode except that Clinton and Gore get some fawning news coverage.
Aug 11, 2009 - 1:57 pm 27. polkabout:The only book written by these two that would be worth the ink to print,
Aug 11, 2009 - 4:27 pm 28. Gaffe Prices:requires it to be after serving the penalty, short in length and only addresses that one should accept the consequences of their actions to violate the law. Anything thing else only would bolster a flaw of society today, the lack of one’s responsibility.
I have serious doubts that the book will reveal or spend any time on the amount of cash paid to write the book, nor the cash or other favours exchanged to secure their release, nor what life is like in a North Korean prison for those not so well connected and with no hope of being liberated by folks with access to the megabucks.
That’s the only thing I’m interested in reading about.
Aug 11, 2009 - 7:44 pm 29. ex:i think if they violated Korean laws willfully they should still be in prison.
Aug 12, 2009 - 3:29 am