I landed at JFK after a short trip out of the country, eager to get my bags and go home. But one of the video monitors caught my eye... a presenter from the BBC was announcing the breaking news that journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee of the Current Network (founded by former VP & Nobel laureate Al Gore) were convicted of "committing hostilities against the Korean nation and illegal entry." (It is in dispute if they even crossed the North Korean border.) Their sentence: twelve years of hard labor.
I tweeted a garbled version of the breaking news, and then many voices chimed in online, most voicing outrage and some demanding military action.
Outrage is more than justified.
But the calls for military action seemed to come out of a void... a void where the only response to provocation and injustice is to start what we have no clear vision of finishing: that is, another war, on another front. Twenty years ago Afghanistan handed the Soviet forces their rear ends on a platter, in a conflict that is often equated to Vietnam. If a nation is willing to expend countless people to win a war; willing to accept mass casualties; then it is almost impossible to crush that nation militarily. North Korea is a very different military and government model than Afghanistan, but it too has already shown a willingness to let families die of famine (well over a million in recent years) rather than play ball with other nations.
The New York Times points out that both the US and the UN are considering sanctions against North Korea for its recent nuclear tests. But it also runs this telling quote:
"Our response would be to consider sanctions against us as a declaration of war and answer it with extreme hard-line measures," the North Korea's state-run newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, said in a commentary.
In other words, North Korea is spoiling for a fight. The sentencing of Lee and Ling may not be an attempt to guard against conflict, but rather to provoke it. (Note that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in an interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, already tried to apologize and broker a release... before the sentence came down.)
Why look for battle? To be seen as a "big man" in international affairs is no small thing. Many have defied the U.S. with fewer means to more than scattered applause from some quarters. Yes, some people were rooting for the Somali pirates who captured the U.S. vessel.
So: a nuclear equipped nation is spoiling for a fight with the world's only superpower, a superpower which finds itself overextended militarily in Iraq and Afghanistan. Two journalists are held in breach. Two young women are away from their families and lives, potentially for years, for doing their jobs.
It's rare that Americans are put in this position, directly in the line of fire. Journalist Chauncey Bailey was killed in Oakland, California, in 2007 while investigating a possible murder cover up. Some American reporters have been wounded and died in Iraq. (I think of the moving writing of Michael Weisskopf of Time magazine, who tossed a grenade thrown into the vehicle he was riding in in Iraq out... saving his life and others' but losing his arm.) But the people imprisoned or killed for "committing" journalism are usually not American or even Western. Countless Iraqi translators and reporters have been killed, often working as stringers for Western media. Latin America has seen journalists killed covering narcotrafficking, government corruption, and crime.
Groups like the Committee to Protect Journalists work on these issues every day. (Their website, linked above, runs the headlines "Tiananmen anniversary, obscured" and "Fifth Somali Journalist Killed this Year.") Few people outside of the media industry even know that groups like the CPJ exist.
Of all the questions that come to mind when looking at the case of Lee, Ling, and North Korea, the one troubling most people I know (personally or in the Twitter-verse) is: What do I do? What do we do? What can we do?
The first thing we can do is to inform ourselves, to get to know more about North Korea than its name. We need to learn more about the possible regime change in North Korea and how it could hinder diplomacy; what recent and past North Korean actions (from the nuclear tests to famines to the 1953 armistice with South Korea, which the North says it now will not honor) say about this government and its desires; who is negotiating on behalf of the U.S.; and how movements like the call for action in Darfur have or have not worked in addressing human rights issues.
On that last score, two more phrases come to mind: celebrity and social networking. Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk), perhaps the most followed person in the Twitter-verse, chimed in to say, among several things, that he was exploring ways to network a coalition of supporters. I do believe it matters than Laura comes from an already well-network family. (Her sister Lisa Ling does or has worked for outlets including Oprah and ABC; Lisa and I briefly overlapped at ABC). I do believe it is critical for celebrities and other people who connect the media to the masses (i.e., most of us) get their talking points ready. And those talking points must include an actual depth of knowledge about the situation.
So: what do we do? We listen, we learn. Let me repeat that: we learn. We learn about the situation; the diplomatic interventions; and who can help. Whether we are journalists, celebrities, news consumers, even diplomats, we can constantly refresh our knowledge of the situation and strive to help from a position of educated power and compassion.
To the speedy freedom of these two journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee; to a renewal of our interest in and championing of brave journalism as well as brave journalists.
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Farai Chideya is the author of the new novel "Kiss the Sky" and runs PopandPolitics.com
You see North Korea will not back down from military threats from anyone. Some people think that China and Russia may be able to force North Korea to do as they tell it to do. This view is greatly mistaken. To be sure, especially China has great influences on North Korea, but if China tries to force something on Northe Korea, it will dig down further.
Leading ideology of North Korea centers around concepts like 'self-pride' and 'self-reliance.' Especially the leaders of North Korean millitary which has great power in the country have a great sense of pride based on their fight against Japanese colonialism and the U.S during Korean war.
Too bad that Mr. Obama and Hillary Clinton seem to follow G.W. Bush and neo-con's rhetoric and action in dealing with North Korea.
As for the military mission if it comes to that, it's simply to degrade the military capability of North Korea to the point where it cannot effectively threaten South Korea or Japan. North Korea is still nominally at war with an ally of ours, after all. The military is good at breaking things. This would be a case where the mission would match the core competency pretty well. Still, it shouldn't come to that.
The real negotiations should be with China. China has a lot more leverage with North Korea than we do. To take an extreme case, if China were to give the green light to a first strike on North Korea to take out their medium-range missiles, North Korea would be in a very different negotiating position.
I do think there's room for negotiation with China.
China has plenty for us to complain about, but then again the US is still holding people without charges at Guantanamo. No one is qualified to cast the first stone. The US, as a world power guided primarily by perceived self-interest, has common interests with China as well as areas where our perceived interests are incompatible.
The hostages are journalists, but they're also hostages. China doesn't have any commitment to journalistic freedom, but it does have an interest in how international relations are carried out. Specifically, it's a major world power, so it has an interest in having international relations play out in a way that favors major powers. Having hostage-taking be a tacitly accepted means of influencing each other isn't in China's interests.
Also, the hostages may have been taken on Chinese territory, after China had allowed them to be there. To really formulate a sound response we would need to know whether China was complicit, basically snubbing the US via North Korea, or whether China views this as trouble-making by North Korea.
These women are being used as pawns by the North Korean government to bully us into one on one negotiations between our two nations. This is how North Korea deals with its issues with the world. These women need to be released without us giving an inch to North Korea.
This rogue nation should not have been removed from the Terrorist List (another huge blunder by the Bush Administration). Giving into this nation is asking for more obfuscations, and breaking of promises and treaties. North Korea needs to be put in its place. Sanctions do not work because this regimen will simply punish its populace but some of the other tactics may work. They need to be more than verbally reprimanded actions speak louder than words.
Maybe Governor Richardson needs to be sent (if he would agree) to bring these women back. Governor Richardson has done this type of work in North Korea before. He seems to know more than anyone else we have how this uber secretive nation works.