Freed Fargo reporter honored as two others face 12 years in Korean labor camp

As Fargo-born reporter Roxana Saberi — freed last month from an Iranian jail — receives the Medill Medal for Courage from Northwestern University, a pair of American journalists now find themselves facing a long prison sentence on similar charges: Current TV reporters Laura Ling and Euna Lee have been tried and convicted by a North Korean kangaroo court. They face 12 years in a labor camp for “hostilities against the Korean nation and illegal entry.”

The pair was working on a piece about the trafficking of women for the online video news site and weren’t aware that they crossed the border into North Korea, they said. While American officials work “feverishly” (according to ABC News) in an effort to secure their release, Spencer Ackerman at the Washington Independent tracks down what a “labor camp” sentence means. From the State Department’s 2008 Human Rights Report:

Reeducation through labor, primarily through sentences at forced labor camps, was a common punishment and consisted of tasks such as logging, mining, or tending crops under harsh conditions. Reeducation involved memorizing speeches by Kim Jong-il…

If the pair are dubbed political prisoners, they may face harsher conditions, including “prolonged periods of exposure to the elements; humiliations such as public nakedness; confinement for up to several weeks in small ‘punishment cells’ in which prisoners were unable to stand upright or lie down; being forced to kneel or sit immobilized for long periods; being hung by the wrists; being forced to stand up and sit down to the point of collapse.”

The same report underscores the importance of Lee’s and Ling’s work exposing trafficking of women across the border with China:

There were no known laws specifically addressing the problem of trafficking in persons, and trafficking of women and young girls into and within China continued to be widely reported. Some North Korean women and girls who voluntarily crossed into China were picked up by trafficking rings and sold as brides to Chinese nationals or placed in forced labor. In other cases, North Korean women and girls were lured out of North Korea by the promise of food, jobs, and freedom, only to be forced into prostitution, marriage, or exploitive labor arrangements. A network of smugglers facilitated this trafficking. Many victims of trafficking, unable to speak Chinese, were held as virtual prisoners, and some were forced to work as prostitutes. Traffickers sometimes abused or physically scarred the victims to prevent them from escaping. Officials facilitated trafficking by accepting bribes to allow individuals to cross the border into China.

The Obama administration would like to keep the journalists’ cause separate from bargaining over North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, but many fear the country will use the case as leverage. Word is Obama is considering sending former Vice President Al Gore (founder of Current.com) or New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson to Pyongyang to negotiate for the duo’s release.