Journalists arrested in N. Korea: who cares?

The case of Roxana Saberi, the American/Iranian journalist jailed on a spurious charge of espionage in Tehran, has belatedly received quite a lot of media attention here and in the USA (my previous blog posts on the case are here).

So what about Laura Ling and Euna Lee, American reporters arrested by North Korean guards on the Chinese border on 17 March?

Today the North Korean news agency said that they would be tried “on the basis of the confirmed crimes committed by them.” That doesn’t sound good. Tried for what? Why? And who’s trying to help them? They’ve already been held in a North Korean “guesthouse” for five weeks.

The two women were reporting for a small internet TV channel based in San Francisco called Current TV when they either crossed or strayed too near the Tumen River which divides China from North Korea.

In winter, the river is frozen so it’s easy to cross, but it’s not clear whether they slipped over onto the North Korean side, or whether the soldiers went into China and seized them. They were reporting on refugees who escape to China – an important story Channel 4 News has covered several times in the past.

Maybe Current TV has been told that kicking up too much of a fuss wouldn’t help the cause. But it does seem a little strange that, at time of writing, the Current.com website made no mention we could find of the journalists’ plight. Current TV is backed by Al Gore but I haven’t yet heard him publicly calling for the women’s release.

I know that the North Korean regime doesn’t respond well to western pressure. The Americans, who don’t have direct relations with Pyongyang, have apparently made representations through the Swedes. But it’s easy for governments to give up if there’s no publicity. In the past, North Korea has responded to carefully prepared visits by individual envoys.

More than that, their families might like to feel that some people care, and are aware of the ordeal Laura Ling and Euna Lee are going through.