Reporters receive medal for courage

April 20, 2011 by DREW HOOKS
Filed under News

Two U.S. reporters who were captured in March of 2009 by the North Korean military and were held for 140 days before being released were honored Wednesday for their courage.

The journalists, Euna Lee and Laura Ling, were working on a story about North Korean women who had escaped into China and were being placed in the sex trade.

Lee and Ling were awarded the University’s McGill Medal for Journalistic Courage.

Euna Lee accepts the McGill Medal. Lee and fellow journalist Laura Ling were honored Wednesday. Photo by Frances Micklow | The Red & Black

“We journalists are sick for justice. That is in our veins,” Lee said. “Laura and I went to tell a story about defectors who are abused and treated like livestock. It was nothing fancy. We went to do our jobs, telling the facts.”

Lee and Ling said they went to China to be a voice for these women.

“They can’t speak for themselves. They have to stay hidden from authorities so they would not be deported to North Korea where they will be sent to the feared labor camps,” Lee said. “It was one thing to hear a story and it is another thing to see it personally, and I was determined to tell their story. That was my promise to my sources when I interviewed them, that I would tell their story to the world.”

Ling dedicated the award to the North Korean women they worked with.

“It was these women who are the courageous ones, and I would like to dedicate this award to them,” she said.

The McGill Medal for Journalistic Courage is named in honor of Ralph McGill, editor of The Atlanta Constitution, who challenged racial segregation in the South in his editorials during the 1950s and 1960s and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1958. The McGill Medal is a part of the McGill Lecture sponsored by the Grady College of Journalism at the University since 1979. The medal, which began in 2009, is awarded to working U.S. journalists who exemplify journalistic courage.

Omar Lewis, a senior McGill Fellow, said Lee and Ling were awarded the medal for their “moral, ethical and physical courage as journalists. While in custody, their first priority was protecting their sources by eating their notes and destroying their tapes when they could.”

Lee shared her experience.

“I was running towards Chinese soil and I was hoping they wouldn’t shoot my head because my backpack could block the bullet,” Lee said. “My first thought was, ‘I don’t want to go.’ Second thought was ‘I’m going to be killed.’”

Lee’s husband, Michael Saldate, was not expecting anything to go wrong when his wife left for her assignment.

“I thought everything was going to be fine,” Saldate said. “Overall, she’s going to be safe — China’s a civil country, North Korea is a civil country — so when I got the phone call at 5 a.m. March 17, I was a little in disbelief.”

Saldate said the news of Lee’s capture was devastating and made him feel helpless.

“It was bigger than anything I could imagine,” he said. “Imagine a moment of feeling helpless and times that by 100, 500 or a thousand.”

Lee said while she was detained, she never lost hope.

“I didn’t want to lose hope to go home because I had a baby. She was 4,” she said. “There were times I was in deep despair. I thought I was falling down a black hole, but I received letters from my family and friends and they were like water from a well.”

Former President Bill Clinton went to North Korea and bargained for the journalists’ release. Lee said the announcement that they were going to be released was unbelievable.

“I kind of had an idea when I met President Clinton that I was going to go home but I didn’t want to get excited,” she said. “I was just amazed, being in North Korea for four and a half months, then waking up and getting on a private plane just felt surreal.”

Returning to the United States was exhilarating, Lee said.

“It feels good even breathing the air in freedom country. I was so thankful. I made a list when I was in North Korea of what I wanted to do when I go home, and slowly I did them,” she said. “One night, Michael and I sat around the table and talked about how good God is.”