As the father of a young journalist who is sometimes “too adventurous” in her news coverage, Doug Ling once admitted that he often worried about his daughter Laura.
In June, Laura Ling and colleague Euna Lee were sentenced by North Korea to 12 years of hard labour for "grave crimes.” The two women were working for San Francisco-based media outlet Current TV, the company co-founded by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore.
Ling, 32, was born and raised in Carmichael, California and is the sister of Lisa Ling, an award-winning CNN correspondent and former co-host of The View. Laura Ling graduated from Del Campo High School in Fair Oaks, California in 1994. She achieved high grades there and worked on the school newspaper. Throughout her career as a journalist, Ling has reported on drug wars in Mexico and native tribes in Brazil.
Before her arrest in North Korea, she used Twitter to post updates about her work. On March 14, she made a post saying she was at the Seoul airport on her way to the "China/NKorea border."
Ling has been married for five years to Iain Clayton, who said before her sentencing that he writes and sends care packages to his wife in North Korea.
Euna Lee, 36, holds a bachelor of fine arts in film and broadcasting from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco.
Lee has worked as a video editor since 2000, working on various projects in California before her work with Current TV. From 2000 to 2004 she worked as a video editor for San Francisco-based Tech TV.
Lee has a 4-year-old daughter named Hannah, and is married to actor Michael Saldate.
On July 5, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il issued a special pardon to the journalists, after former U.S. president Bill Clinton paid a surprise visit to the country. It was the highest-level U.S. contact with North Korea since Clinton was president nearly a decade ago.
Ling and Lee arrived with Clinton at Burbank Airport near Los Angeles aboard a private jet from North Korea on July 6. Ling raised her arms in the air in a sign of victory as she and her colleague descended from the plane to an emotional reunion with their families inside an airport hangar.
Ling said she and Lee both feared they could be taken at any moment to a hard labor camp when they were led instead to a location where Clinton was waiting for them.
"We knew instantly in our hearts that the nightmare of our lives was finally coming to an end. Now we stand here home and free," she told reporters.
Clinton was received with a round of applause and an embrace from Gore, who said U.S. President Barack Obama and "countless members of his administration have been deeply involved" in securing the journalists’ release.
Clinton did not speak on arrival, but in a statement he said the women’s families, Gore and the White House had asked him to undertake the humanitarian mission to Pyongyang. Obama said he was "extraordinarily relieved" at the return of the journalists and thanked Clinton.
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