The fact that Laura Ling, Mitch Koss, and Euna Lee were responsible for the capture and deportation of North Korean refugees and human rights activists has now been published in the New York Times:

Laura Ling and Euna Lee, the two American journalists released after nearly five months in North Korean custody, have been widely portrayed at home as victims of unduly harsh punishment by a repressive government for simply doing their job.

But here in South Korea, human rights advocates, bloggers and Christian pastors are accusing them of needlessly endangering the very people they tried to cover: North Korean refugees and the activists who help them.

The accusations stem from a central fear repeated in newspapers and blogs here: that the notes and videotapes the journalists gathered in China before their ill-fated venture to the border fell into the hands of the authorities, potentially compromising the identities of refugees and activists dedicated to spiriting people out of the North.

The Rev. Lee Chan-woo, a South Korean pastor, said the police raided his home in China on March 19, four days after the journalists visited and filmed a secret site where he looked after children of North Korean refugee women. He said that he was then deported in early April and that his five secret homes for refugees were shut down. The children, he said, were dispersed to family members in China, who could not afford to take care of them.

“The Chinese cited scenes from films confiscated from the journalists when they interrogated me,” said Mr. Lee, 70. As evidence of the ordeal, he provided documents he said the Chinese police gave him after the raid.

“The reporters visited our place with a noble cause,” he added. “I did my best to help them. But I wonder how they could be so careless in handling their tapes and notebooks. They should have known that if they were caught, they would suffer for sure, but also many others would be hurt because of them.”  [New York Times via reader tip]

Read the rest, but journalist Choe Sang-hun does a pretty good job with this article exposing how this Current TV crew has put so many people at risk.  He also gets Reverend Chun Ki-won to also comment on the sloppiness of the reporters.  Current TV responded to Choe’s enquiries by saying that the reverends were incorrect in their statements.  So is Current TV saying the reverends are lying? That is a pretty big accusation.  Why would the Durihana mission have to lie about this?

Mitch Koss

Choe was also able to get a quote from controversial cameraman Mitch Koss who also insinuates that the reverends and everyone else is lying about what happened:

The cameraman, Mr. Koss, declined to answer specific questions about the trip until Ms. Ling and Ms. Lee had spoken first. Still, he said, he was amazed by “how many untrue stories have been published in the last five months” and how “when there is silence, fantasy answers to fill in empty spaces.”

I’m not sure what Mitch Koss expects when they won’t come clean on what happened.  What we do know for a fact is that they intentionally crossed into North Korea according to Laura Ling’s sister Lisa Ling.  What is still unclear is the role the Chinese-Korean guide Kim Seong-cheol played in all of this.  It has been speculated that he may have lured the reporters into a trap.  However, there has been no evidence of this and even if he did it was still their decision to cross the river into North Korea.  No matter how you look at it, this decision is boneheaded.

Another fact is that they all stand to makes millions of dollars off of this episode while North Korean refugees and human rights workers are being rounded up by Chinese authorities.   Why doesn’t Current TV say whether or not the reporters’ tapes were in fact confiscated by Chinese authorities?  Could it be that they are too embarrassed to admit that the tapes were captured and instead are just waiting until attention over this issue goes away?

By the way One Free Korea has an update that Laura Ling and Euna Lee are supposedly “anguished” by the news reports and blog postings criticizing them.  Once again what do you expect if you are not willing to come clean on what happened?  It is pretty simple did the Chinese authorities recover tapes with images of North Korean refugees on them or not?