Freed U.S. Journalists Give Public Account of Capture by N. Korea

The American journalists detained by North Korean authorities for nearly five months admit in a newly published account that they briefly entered North Korean territory while reporting a story, but say they were "firmly back inside China" when North Korean border guards dragged them back across the frozen Tumen River into North Korea and 140 days of captivity.

The journalists' producer and guide "were both able to outrun the border guards," Laura Ling and Euna Lee wrote in a 2,000-word article that was posted Tuesday night on the Web site of San Francisco-based Current TV, their employer. "We were not. We tried with all our might to cling to bushes, ground, anything that would keep us on Chinese soil, but we were no match for the determined soldiers."

The article is the first public description by the two journalists of the circumstances that led to their arrest. Ling and Lee were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor for grave offenses against the North Korean government. They were freed last month on humanitarian grounds after former president Bill Clinton flew to Pyongyang and met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il on their behalf.

The journalists were in the border region to report on a highly sensitive issue -- the trafficking of women so desperate to escape the repression and poverty of North Korea that they enter into arranged marriages and the online sex industry in China.

Ling and Lee said they had "no intention of leaving China, but when our guide beckoned for us to follow him beyond the middle of the river, we did, eventually arriving at the riverbank on the North Korean side." The guide pointed out a village that he said contained safe houses for North Koreans waiting to be smuggled into China.

"Feeling nervous about where we were, we quickly turned back toward China," Ling and Lee wrote. "Midway across the ice, we heard yelling. We looked back and saw two North Korean soldiers with rifles running toward us. Instinctively, we ran." But the guards caught up with them after they had reached Chinese soil.

The journalists suggest that their guide might have lured them into a trap. "We didn't spend more than a minute on North Korean soil before turning back, but it is a minute we deeply regret. To this day, we still don't know if we were lured into a trap," they wrote.

"In retrospect, the guide behaved oddly, changing our starting point on the river at the last moment and donning a Chinese police overcoat for the crossing, measures we assumed were security precautions. But it was ultimately our decision to follow him, and we continue to pay for that decision today with dark memories of our captivity."