Laura Ling

On October 12^th, 2011 I attended the speaker Laura Ling at Pruis Hall. I have never heard of her story before, but I definitely thought that it was an interesting impacting story.

It was about Laura Ling and her life story as a journalist and a tragic event that happened to her. She first began her story by a little video that showed what kind of stories she covers. She traveled to many different countries and covered stories that involved tragedy, bloodshed, and violence. Ling was an embedded journalist for the different wars going on in these countries. She even witnessed some of these things first hand, while in the different countries. She traveled to China where she was studying a story on woman trafficking. While she was doing this study she encountered her worst nightmare. From late March until early August 2009 she was a prisoner of the North Korea regime of dictator Kim Jong II. She and her fellow journalist Euna Lee were detained at the border of North Korea and Chine and accused/charged of trying to enter the country illegally. She was charged with twelve years of hard labor in one of the communist country’s work camps. Bill Clinton was who freed Laura Ling and Euna Lee during a diplomatic mission to Pyongyang.

Today, she is working for E!. She is reporting and journaling about certain topics involving student suicide rate, obesity, and different ethical vivid stories along those lines. She is still continue to journal on these types of topics that have an impact on people in the world, and that some people are not so much aware of.

I thought this speaker was interesting because she definitely kept the audiences attention the whole time. She spoke with a clear understandable tone to her voice and was very emotional in a good way when she was speaking. The only reason Bill Clinton was able to free Ling from North Korea is because fifteen years ago he made one phone call in condolences to Kim Jong II and his loss. Because of this small gesture Kim Jong II has always wanted to meet Bill Clinton, so this lead to an outcome of Laura Ling and Euna Lee being freed from a prison in North Korea. She mentioned how some of her guards were woman and very strict, but the little things they did when they were in a decent mood and not “spewing anti U.S rhetoric” were comforting to her.

I feel that Laura Ling did not do anything wrong in the sense of trying to help woman/people out during hard times in their life, and make certain topics available to be seen by Americans and any of her readers. She was just “tricked” in a way by her tour guide at that certain story she was covering on the border of North Korea and China. She quoted in her speech that “certain journeys/stories entail risk”, and I think that this exact story and journey she experienced definitely proved that.