Word: ling
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...hard to ignore a bully with a bomb, and while the Bush Administration was freezing him out and calling him evil, the Dear Leader was going nuclear. Then North Korean border guards seized Euna Lee and Laura Ling, two journalists from Al Gore's TV network. The ensuing clamor for their release raised compelling questions. (Aside from, Al Gore has a TV network?) Is it naive to talk to totalitarian whack jobs like Kim, as Hillary Clinton argued during the 2008 campaign? Or is it counterproductive to stick our fingers in our ears, as Barack Obama replied...
Clinton ended up as Obama's Secretary of State, so on Aug. 3, her husband Bill--no slouch in the high-stakes-diplomacy department--flew to Pyongyang to execute Obama's strategy. On Aug. 4, after meeting with Kim, he took Lee and Ling home to California...
...current mission was quite different. In addition to freedom for Ling and Lee, Clinton no doubt intended to explore ways to arrest the diplomatic downward spiral that's ensued since Obama entered the White House in January. The North has tested its second nuclear bomb (the first test was in October 2006) as well as a long-range missile and has said it has no intention of ever rejoining the so-called six-party talks - the Bush Administration's ultimately futile attempt to get the North to, in effect, re-enact the Agreed Framework of the Clinton era. (See pictures...
...with that, the questions about the former President's visit to Pyongyang - and about where relations with Kim's North Korea go from here - begin. As expected once he arrived, Clinton departed North Korea Wednesday morning with the two American TV journalists, Euna Lee and Laura Ling, that he had come to spring from detention there. A senior Administration official revealed on Aug. 4 that the North Koreans had, in effect, directly requested that the former President visit Pyongyang. If Clinton did visit, the North Koreans told their two prisoners, they would be granted "amnesty" and freed. (See pictures...
...Ling passed that on to their families in the occasional phone calls they were permitted from the guesthouse where they were held, and former Vice President Al Gore - who co-founded the network that the two women were on assignment for - called his former boss to suggest the trip. Once assured that the North Koreans meant what they said, the White House signed off on the idea. The visit ended the journalist's 4½ month nightmare after being arrested March 17 and held in North Korea as punishment for allegedly crossing the border while filming a report on refugees...