“Wham! The war broke out … I went off my rocker, I hated the enemy, I couldn’t wait to go and fight.” – Saul Bellow in “Augie March”
They wanted to get into North Korea. They wanted exposes, the dirtier the better. They wanted a headline that reads, in New York, “We Were in North Korea”. Hurray! Who knows, maybe they were thinking of a Pulitzer? After that, untold riches? They pursued the American-style evangelical journalism, “investigative journalism” by another name. This says North Korea is Evil, we are the Good. After all, didn’t an American president say it is among the Axis of Evil?
Well, Euna Lee (picture, left) and Laura Ling got what they wanted and pursued: 12 years inside North Korea. And, when and if they get out, they can write about it and sell lots of books, give speeches, tour campuses, and talk about how badly they suffered.
It used to be just naive White American kid journalists that get into trouble in Russia or East Germany. Now, it is the converted, stupid Yellow-skin American women journalists (Singapore’s Straits Times has such types) that get into trouble – everywhere. And, worse, they betray and embarrass the Chinese government that allowed them into the country and near the border. (Remember the fat American boy who swam up to Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma?)
Who should be held responsible? Who is complicit to Euna and Laura in jail? American can-do, cowboy media culture for one. For another, it is organisations like this which promote the underlying idea that you can do anything and whatever you want; there are no boundaries. Words without Borders – what a clever idea! It’s also called Freedom of The Press. If it is constitutionally guaranteed for America then it is also good for the Rest of the World and they must have it, like it or not (Malaysia has imported it, Malaysiakini being the model). American condescension is eternal. Poor girls.
And while the girls spend time in jail, they continue in America to detail – this itself is a story on top of a story – about the wretched and the banality of diplomacy, and about cruel North Koreans: “We can’t even get a phone call through (sob, sob). See, how evil they are? It’s proof.” That, too, is evangelical journalism, but by other means.
Welcome home to America.
[Related: The Johnses and Tiananmen ]
