Current TV journalist Laura Ling, who was arrested in North Korea for (accidentally?) crossing the border, will appear on Oprah today. Among other things, according to Gawker who already saw the show (damned time zones!), Ling will chat about not being able to take a proper shower and stinking up the place. Ick. Why would one ever admit to such a thing? more ›

Oh hey, look! Former North Korean captives Laura Ling and Euna Lee have posted a thank-you video for all of you who helped get them released. You know, those of you who wrote to your congressperson, attended the many candlelight vigils, or joined the grassroots-ish Facebook page that helped press for their freedom. more ›

After almost five months of being held in North Korea for "hostile acts," San Francisco-based journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee arrived back in the U.S. just 24 hours after Bill Clinton negotiated their release with Kim Jong Il. The two flew into Bob Hope Airport in Burbank early this morning, "dressed in short-sleeved shirts and jeans" and appearing "healthy." more ›

Last night. before a vigil for Current TV journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who are currently serving a 12-year jail sentence in North Korea for illegally crossing the border, the inmates' husbands spoke out about their conditions. The news was disheartening. more ›

more ›

Concerned that today's sentencing will land, if all goes horribly wrong, Current TV journos Laura Ling and Euna Lee 12 years of hard labor inside a North Korean jail, we asked formerly-jailed journalist Josh Wolf for his thoughts on the brouhaha. more ›

While many chin-scratching political commentators claim that Laura Ling and Euna Lee, the two Current TV journalists who were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor in North Korea, are bargaining chips in a high stakes poker game who will be set free once negotiations begin (what, no chess metaphors? oh wait, that's just for the Middle East), you should know that North Korean prisons are no Martha Stewart-insider-trading spa retreats. Lee and Ling will not wax poetic to the media about the taste of lemon or monochromatic home accents during their incarcerations. North Korean hard labor prisons make Midnight Express look like after-school detention. The gulags of North Korea can involve torture, rape, beatings, and much worse. According to San Diego Union Tribune, "Grandsons are condemned to life-long terms as slave laborers alongside their grandfathers, both equally helpless in the brutal surroundings. Prisoners are arbitrarily murdered by security guards. Women suffer from forced abortions at the hands of unlicensed doctors. Newborn babies are beaten to death. And sons and daughters are publicly executed in front of their mothers." If their sentences are carried out, Ling and Lee could face these conditions in North Korea's gulag system. Our hearts go out to the two journos and their families. Seriously. more ›

Euna Lee and Laura Ling, the two Current TV reporters nabbed by North Korean border guards while they were doing a story about human trafficking on the Chinese-North Korean border, have been sentenced to 12 years hard labor in what former U.N. Ambassador Bill Richardson has called a "high-stakes poker game" that has more to do with our nuclear relations than it does with these women and their alleged crimes. A Korean-language TV station has reported that the women were convicted of "hostility toward the Korean people." more ›

In an effort to raise awareness about the plight of Laura Ling and Euna Lee, the two CurrentTV journalists detained in North Korea, there will be a vigil tonight on the front steps of City Hall from 6 to 8 p.m. The women, who are likely being used as pawns in the volatile relations between North Korea and the United States, go on trial tomorrow and have been assigned a North Korean attorney. more ›

CurrentTV journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who were detained for illegally crossing the North Korean border and accused of "hostile acts," are set to go on trial on Thursday. They were working on a documentary about the sad stories about North Korean refugees fleeing to China. If convicted, they could spend up to ten years in a North Korean boot camp. Al Gore, a partner at Current, has been working closely with the State Department to get the women released, and the Swedish Mission at the United Nations has been serving as an intermediary. more ›