Posted on 06/05/2009 3:51:31 AM PDT by AmericanInTokyo
A sombre scoop for Pyongyang's pawns By Donald Kirk WASHINGTON - North Korean strategists must be loving every minute of it. They've got two American women in their net, charged with entering the country illegally and committing "hostile acts". They've got the United States State Department working behind the scenes for their release while talking tough in public about North Korean "provocations". They've got the women's relatives - including an older sister who once made a television documentary exposing the horrors of life in North Korea - appealing publicly for mercy. And they've also got activists across the US staging "vigils", praying and pleading for justice. But none of this is likely to have much impact on authorities in North Korea when it comes to deciding the fate of the two women, who were arrested by North Korean soldiers on March 17 while on assignment for Current TV, the San Francisco Internet television network that's half-owned by Al Gore, the former US vice president. If such gestures do have a cumulative effect, it's more likely to be on how to best exploit the women's case to extract full value from them. The pair could be useful bargaining tools in the much greater struggle for recognition as a nuclear power. Rewards for full membership in the global nuclear club would be billions of aid in return for pledges to not intimidate South Korea, Japan and the US with warheads fitted to intercontinental ballistic missiles. Through the trial, North Korean authorities can wreak a measure of revenge on all the journalists who've been reporting for years on the horrors of life in North Korea, mostly relayed by defectors who've made it to China. The two women at the center of the attention, Laura Ling and Euna Lee
(Excerpt) Read more at atimes.com ...
I swear.
I don't go with all of this article, but the guy knows his stuff, and knows the North Korean mindset and negotiating strategy, and how usually the US (through its ignorant if not appeasing diplomats) falls into needless traps due to its stupidity, so I think it is worth posting.
Ping!
You can almost see the headlines now. "Progress in US/DPRK relations, journalists released!" (buried in paragraph 6 will be the billions in aid money, food, and technology assistance that it cost us)
er, make that ‘from here until 2020’
The more outcry in the US and candlelight vigils by liberals who heretofore could not give JACKSHIT about North Korea and what they did to millions of other people, will increase the value of these two women in the eyes of North Korea, and in fact they become a potent negotiating card. They have got Obama by the balls. Reagan would have just said, sorry, we wont be intimidated, but you KNOW this Administration is going to tiptoe around all of this, to the extent it seriously threatens whole nations like S. Korea and Japan, just over two of Al Gore’s employees who would up in that shithole somehow.
Not to get conspiratorial here, but I still smell a rat, and you almost want to say “it was an inside job.”
The way I heard it these two women reporters entered North Korea illegally from China. Correct me if I heard it wrong. If these two reporters think they can do that and they get caught, what were they thinking? North Korea is not the US where reporters can trespass to get a story. They would be lucky to get out with their lives.
North Korea will become a carbon credit sponge.
Having no or perhaps even negative CO2 emissions, Algore will negotiate an arrangement where the two are released in exchange for bundling the NK carbon credit certificates for sale to American and Euro entities.
Al’s company will take a small commission but North Korea will receive almost all of the credit proceeds
Their American cameraman, back in the states safely in San Francisco, is as silent as a ninja these days. Of course, if he saw them venturing to the North Korean side foolishly and he accompanied them, and he knew for a fact they were in there, on DPRK soil taking a risk for good footage, and the two said something like, “hey the coast is clear...lets go over for a minute or two and get a REAL SCOOP”, but they got nabbed and he got away, he is not going to sing, as he will convict them on the spot. Of course, either way you slice it, they are convicted. We are just waiting for the sentence. (To be fair, I can also envision some kind of no mans’ land in which they were walking around on the river’s icy surface, and the Norkie guards went out and grabbed them and hauled them off.)
bttt
Kind of like the Hatchet incident of 1976 at Panmunjom, there was likely some level of neutrality in where they were reporting from, but the KPA simply ignored that due to the 'hostile nature of the incident' and took action. Actually, come to think of it, it's like pretty much every incident with the North Koreans, whether by land, sea or air. They love causing mischief by crossing the border, and then crying foul.
As far as your conspiracy theory, I really have a hard time envisioning anyone willingly getting captured by the Norks. It boggles my mind. Then again, I have a book in my den on the various torture techniques the KPA inflicted on captured US and ROK troops in the war. I'd hate to think that reporters covering North Korea could be so ignorant of what they were up against, but they will find stupidity is no defense.
Algore will "thaw out" relations with DPRK!
Bend over some more, Barry.
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