Bargaining chips.
That’s all I have been reading about when it comes to Laura Ling and Euna Lee. Laura and Euna worked for “Current TV” and I have blogged about how much I have enjoyed their Vanguard series of reporting the situations of what is happening in certain countries.
Some may view their style of reporting as too risky but I have always respected their willingness to uncover or reveal situations in various countries that many people don’t know about.
And somehow, in their latest endeavor in Southern China, the women were caught and detained for crossing over North Korea. Having been detained for over three months, the women were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor.
Many believe that the women will be used as bargaining chips for US and North Korean relationships, especially when tensions are at an all time high with North Korea experimenting with nuclear weapons.
I’ve read one article that suggests that North Korea will position these women as bargaining chips to get humanitarian aid. While another journalist who was in Pyongang for the press was detained and accused for spying (like Ling and Lee) and sentenced to prison back in 1999. He was released in 2002.
But that is too long for these journalists. They are not spies, they accidentally entered into North Korea and who knows what kind of treatment they will receive for this “hard labor”.
We can only pray for both families who are going through a trying time right now. But we have seen this year alone, journalists who have been detained and imprisoned and accused as being spies.
Is this going to be a pattern worldwide? Journalists who are trying to report will now be treated as spies? Imprisoned or killed?
Let us pray for both Laura and Euna and their families during this difficult time and hope that these two women can be brought back home.
