North-Korea/South Korean Border - only way thru is thru snipers, landmines, and barbed wire. Not including maybe some secret tunnels underneath

Thru the Chinese-North Korean Border well that is different. Some parts they have some fence. But mostly I hear the border is just a river. So if you are on the other side of the river - get you ass back! With of course the usual guards and guards posts. But no land mines and major walls or fences. Heck you can take a ferry trip on the bloody border river for a few bucks and get with-in a stones throw of the North Korean shore.

Have heard tales/stories of some people bribing guards to go in. But those are usually Chinese-Korean smuggling some basic goods in or people trying to visit family or go home after earning money in China. So MAYBE these two reporters thought being and looking Chinese/Korean maybe they can go in for a quick peek. In the end the women got caught because even if Euna Lee speaks Korean she does not speak a North Korean dialect and border guard would likely nab her in a second.
It would be like have a Thick accented Louisianan trying to cross the Canadian Border saying he is from Newfoundland. Not gonna work. Heck I would not be surprised that the Guards let her in then once she was a a few feet in grab her and charge them with spying.

Also I hear that the Koreans have spies in the Chinese/Korean border towns and cities on the look out for smugglers and other ilk.

Advice Goddess Lover posted in Korea - out.

PS if you have the time read this thread as it talks a little about an Expat ESL teacher exploring the area around NorthKorea China border area
http://forums.eslcafe.com/korea/viewtopic.php?t=23273&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=60

When I talk to younger people, influenced by our liberal schools, they don't really think there are bad people in the world.
These girls probably thought-Nothing will happen to me this is just bad old Bush/Conservatives trying to scare us.

My older conservative friends, know we wouldn't set foot in North Korea, any Muslim country, some parts of South America, Mexico as it is today.

Being from America doesn't guarntee you safety in the world.

I hope the best for these girls. Wake up kids, there is evil in the world.

Of course there are no bad people - there are only people who have not yet been enlightened by the liberal view of the world!

If there were a tax on stupidity, the federal deficit would be gone in a few days.

In fact, being American puts you considerably at risk in many parts of the world, since American foreign policy has made so many friends worldwide.

Thanks for saying out loud Amy, what I've been wondering. The spin we're hearing in the Western press doesn't ring true. What were these women really up to. Everything I have read agrees with what ronhead said. You don't just stumble across that border.

Now a 12 year sentence may be seem a bit steep. But if they truely went out of their way to violate North Korean territory, they deserve the consequences, regardless of whether they are seasoned journalists or naive newbies.

Gore be a man, and volunteer to go to N. Korea and be jailed, in a prisoner swap!!

dunno... boss says: "you know Korean, right? we have a little assignment for you, plus a bonus."

I get the impression that these two mightn't consider themselves more than cub reporters, they probably didn't realize they would be in harms way, like this. NK is famous for kidnapping women for various reasons, and they don't have to be that close by. All it would take is an NK operative operating in the China area to say to their superiors. "we have a couple of Korean American women looking around..."
JACKPOT. How would they not be a bargaining chip?

Have to agree that it should be Gore trying to get their release, he should be taking responsibility for this. Oh, wait, him?... sure.

HEre's a story about the border region from an NBC news producer:

http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/06/04/1953850.aspx

"Gore be a man, and volunteer to go to N. Korea and be jailed, in a prisoner swap!!"

Not to mention, Arty, that would help save The Planet (he could turn off the main breaker at his Tennessee mansion and save 2 MWhr per day.)

RonHead,thanks for the info. I thought the Yalu was a mighty big river, as in some fairly recent Chinese picture books they show some long bridges across it. At least in that area, the bridges remain as they were right after the US Air Force bombed the crap out of em during the war (a nice job too, I might add).

North Korea is separated from China by two rivers: (1) Yalu River, about 500 miles long and runs southwest emptying into the Yellow Sea, and (2) Tumen River, about 400 miles long and runs northeast emptying into the Sea of Japan. I know of no land borders between the two countries. The Tumen river is the easiest to cross because, like our Rio Grande, the Tumen can be crossed on foot or by swimming. The Yalu River is deep and swift requiring boats to cross.

There was a long but very interesting story in the February 2009 National Geographic called "Escaping North Korea":

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/02/north-korea/oneill-text

Key point: "In North Korea, crossing the border without permission is punishable by three to five years in a prison labor camp". Compare to their 12-year sentence. The China/North Korea border isn't very heavily guarded, but it's not possible to just stumble across it, and reporters of any sort are officially banned. North Koreans who spotted a pair of American Korean women poking around taking pictures could not possibly fail to realize their tremendous potential value as bargaining chips. On many occasions in the past, North Korean agents have sneaked into South Korea & even Japan to kidnap people. It seems very likely to me that the North Koreans spotted them, realized the opportunities, and grabbed them. Now they intend to extract endless bribes & concessions from the US in return for reducing their sentence & eventually letting them go.

Focusing on Euna & Laura's inexperience seems misguided. If you sent your assistant to Tijuana because you wanted material for a column on Mexican drug gangs, and she got kidnapped & held for ransom by narcotrafficantes, her plight would be 100% YOUR fault, would it not? But expecting Al Gore to budge his fat ass even a little bit to help them is like expecting Ted Kennedy to have stuck his neck out for Mary Jo Kopechne.

The military is full of people, many with kids, who put themselves in harm's way. I thank and appreciate them all.

I get the impression that these two mightn't consider themselves more than cub reporters, they probably didn't realize they would be in harms way, like this.

Lee is 36 and Ling is 32.

I don't know what career path journalists are generally on, but isn't that a bit old to be "cub" reporters?

"But expecting Al Gore to budge his fat ass even a little bit to help them is like expecting Ted Kennedy to have stuck his neck out for Mary Jo Kopechne." Martin, you are good! I would like to borrow that one.

Ron H. There has got to be a small land border at least. The Korean Peninsula is a peninsula, not an island (in which case there would be no river, only a channel), so there must be a ridge or two where one can travel between the sources of the one river flowing SW to the Yellow Sea and the one flowing NE to the Sea of Japan. I'm sure it is rough terrain, though.

I feel for the 2 women, but from what I read, they still may be "cub" reporters based on experience. They had no business being there without really knowing their stuff. I also really don't think they will get the harsh treatment that anyone else would have, such as some random N. Korean smuggler. Mr. Ill &%%$$# )###(%%% Great Leader and inventor of the energy-saving light bulb %%!*** ###**### will not want to destroy these bargaining chips. Hard labor for these 2 might mean censoring %&&&))** $$%^&*( &&####! blogs for 12 hours per day.

Hey, why does this software start to block me, as I misspell peninsula?

Ohhhh. I see.

Did no one heed the warning of Lewis Black on the evil that is North Korea?!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNczU5Lsvp4

What David M said.

"when you have kids, maybe you don't get to keep putting yourself in harm's way"

Can't agree here. Now, if you are a kid's sole aprent, then yes. But the world needs cops, firemen, military personel, linemen, etc etc too much to keep them all for the childless.

I question the timing.

A week ago, North Korea detonated an atomic bomb and test-launched three missiles. Now they've got two American reporters in their jail.

A few weeks back, an Iranian-American journalist was imprisoned in Iran for "spying". Then, after Iran test-launched some missiles, she got let go.

I wonder what concessions Iran was able to squeeze out of us. I'd bet that Kim knows, and he's hoping that two will get him more.

Five months in office, and foreign governments are already kidnapping our citizens.

Ok Ok I was gonna go to North Korea a couple years back but I chickened out.

And NO I wasnt going to use my American passport.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2009/may/29/china-north-korea-border?picture=348127774

Some neat pictures above.

Also Yeah - Pretty much a most of the border with North Korea and China is rivers. Also do not forget the North Korea - Russian Border, also river too. Thru looking at one pictures in the above series you can see that at certain times of the year the water level is quiet low. If not land border their has to be at least bridges and those make for a little bit more secure border.

One point their ages is also a point that screams reporter. If I saw two Korean or Chinese woman that looked over the age of thirty not with husband or children with them it screams either to things whore or something not kosher aka reporter/spy (with a minor of widow). Not that Korean culture is as sexist as Muslim countries, but Korea can be pretty male chauvinistic.

"All it would take is an NK operative operating in the China area to say to their superiors. "we have a couple of Korean American women looking around...""

That seems to be exactly what happened. According to our 10 pm news last night that NK operatives heard rumors of two American journalists poking around and gave the order to 'lure them to the border' and they were grabbed.

I guess the North Koreans thought they found a couple of global-warming "muckers" . . .

http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/muckers.html

"Mucker" is a word coined by the science fiction writer John Brunner in his great novel Stand on Zanzibar. The word derives from "amok," which will require a bit of history. It is a Malay word, and a person who goes violently insane, rushing through the village and murderously attacking everyone in his path, is said to have "run amok." In what was an egregiously idiotic statement, even for him, the eminent French critic Georges Bataille called running amok the purest manifestation of revolt, "the movement by which man rises up against his own condition and the whole of creation." (Bataille never ran through the streets of Montparnasse madly slashing with a kris, so he either lacked the courage of his convicions or was a hypocrite with a small - a very small - modicum of brains.) The Malays, inevitably, were and are more sensible: they kill those who run amok.

A "mucker," then, is someone who runs amok; the times havin' a-changed, now they use guns. As always, they are people driven to murderous madness by intolerable frustration, repression and conformity, whether in an isolated kampong or the Postal Service. So far muckers seem to have been mostly Americans, but just the other day the radio carried news of one in Germany.

It does Mr. Brunner's prescience great credit to have foreseen the need for this word, back in 1964; and it does the rest of us no credit at all, for letting such a word be needed.

Here is another link this one goes more into the bridges crossing the Border.

http://tinyurl.com/m9d4d5

PS Do not forget to read some of the comments in the above posting.

They're not "cub reporters" but Current isn't the BBC or CBS news. They had no infa-structure behind them, like regional bureaus with an army of trusted local fixers, drivers, guides, etc. Current hires kids, pays them shit and throws them out there. Laura's career has been at Current, and she's been in risky spots before, but since her sister, Lisa Ling, did an undercover thing in North Korea earlier, and sold the footage to National Geo for a special, she was on the radar of NK and it's thin-skinned ruler.

They could have been dragged over the unseen borderline by NK soldiers, and captured. I'm not blaming them for wanting to get a good story, but I think Current should take a look at how they assign this stuff and who really is at risk. It's not the folks in the cute offices in SF.

The only land border between North Korea and China is Mt. Baekdu which is a gigantic volcano with one of the world's largest crater lakes. From this volcano flows the Yalu and Tumen Rivers that compose the vast majority of the border.

There is no way these two accidentally stumbled across the border. They were captured along the Tumen River which is a large river that cannot be missed. There is some information out there that they were caught on one of the river's bridges. There is also information out there that their Chinese guide who was a North Korean defector himself, was actually working for the North Koreans and he is currently missing and has not been found.

Once the cameraman comes out and speaks, that is the only way we will know more about what really happened.