OK: What WERE they doing there…?

There is no reason not to be sympathetic to the plight of Laura Ling and Euna Lee, the two video “journalists”  working for Current TV whose release from a North Korean gulag was secured by former President Bill Clinton last month to great national acclaim.

No one should wish their worst enemies a night under North Korean guards…

But their commentary /explanation in today’s LA Times of how they were captured only raises again the nagging question: What on earth were they doing there on North Korean soil??

Their explanation of how they were captured once again suggests that these two lacked the proper preparation, knowledge or experience to be tasked for such a risky assignment. While their sympathy for North Korean refugees was perhaps laudable, their decision to knowingly cross the Tumen River border — well known to be ambiguous, not well-marked and full of smuggling routes — suggests, as I have alluded to earlier, a base desire to “touch the soil” in the DPRK even if that had nothing to do with the actual reporting of the story.

Call it a schoolgirl stunt.

As they write:

….We knew our guide was taking us closer to the North Korean side of the river. As he walked, he began making deep, low hooting sounds, which we assumed was his way of making contact with North Korean border guards he knew. The previous night, he had called his associates in North Korea on a black cellphone he kept for that purpose, trying to arrange an interview for us. He was unsuccessful, but he could, he assured us, show us the no-man’s land along the river, where smugglers pay off guards to move human traffic from one country to another.

When we set out, we had no intention of leaving China, but when our guide beckoned for us to follow him beyond the middle of the river, we did, eventually arriving at the riverbank on the North Korean side.

To me this episode also suggests some of the perils of “do it cheap” journalism — the sort of reporting we’ll increasingly see as old-line media die out and the market has not yet found ways to pay experienced hands who know their way around in desolate and foreboding places. Alas, there remain no “barriers to entry” in journalism these days.

I recognize that I’m not being PC here…but I suspect the capture of these two is only the “edge of the wedge,” as increasingly risky and dangerous reporting assignments get taken over by those who really don’t know better.

Laura Ling and Euna Lee: Hostages of the Hermit Kingdom