Two American journalists working for Current TV, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, have been arrested in North Korea, apparently after mistakenly crossing the border while reporting from China on North Korean refugees. From ABC News:
The reporting Ling and Lee were doing took them all the way to the border between China and North Korean.
It is a difficult, even dangerous trip. They got help planning the journey from Reverend Chun Ki Won, a Christian missionary from South Korea whose organization smuggles Bibles into North Korea through China.
[…] “It’s hard to determine the border, that which is North Korea or that which is China because it is just frozen river,” he said.
So Chun said it’s possible that the reporters inadvertently stepped onto North Korean territory, and that was likely when North Korean soldiers arrested the two women, accusing them of entering the country illegally.
Korea Times has more details:
The Korea Central News Agency said its authorities detained two Americans on March 17 while they were “illegally intruding the territory of the DPRK by crossing the DPRK-China border,” Yonhap reported Saturday. DPRK is the official name for North Korea, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
The report came as two female reporters from Current TV, an American Cable outlet, were reportedly taken by North Korean soldiers along the Tumen River on the Chinese border while filming the North Korean side early this week.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “is engaged in this matter right now,” spokesman Robert Wood told reporters Friday. “There is a lot of diplomacy going on. There have been a number of contacts made.”
See some of Ling’s previous reporting on China for Current TV, via CDT.
