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How My Life in Korean Prison Foretold Bill's Success
Korean Central News Agency / AP
On Tuesday, Bill Clinton met with Kim Jong Il in North Korea and negotiated the release of imprisoned American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee. Former Korean prisoner Cullen Thomas explains how his experience foretold Clinton's success.
Bill Clinton’s furtive mission to North Korea this morning to negotiate the release of jailed American reporters Laura Ling and Euna Lee had a greater chance of succeeding than most realized, thanks to an innocuous but important gesture last month that provides some cover for the leaders of a country obsessed with—and driven by—perceived respect.
While observers can titter about how Bill is trying to rescue his wife, the secretary of State, and his running mate, Al Gore, whose Current TV employs the jailed reporters, more attention needs to be paid to a phone call last month. Specifically, Ling, whom along with Lee was sentenced to 12 years hard labor after wandering across the border from China, made explicit in the permitted phone call to her famous sister, TV personality Lisa Ling, that she “broke the law.” A coerced confession? More North Korean mind games? On the contrary. It was a very positive step.
Laura Ling made three phone calls to her family in the states. That's three more than I got in prison in South Korea.
First, if you’ve done wrong (and sometimes even when you haven’t; after all, Ling and Lee were at the mercy of their captors regardless of what actually occurred there on the border) admitting one’s guilt, showing remorse, and asking for mercy is the Confucian way. By doing so, one at least has a chance of getting back into the authority’s good graces.
This story reminded me very much of my experience of being held and tried for a crime in South Korea in the 1990s. Yes, North and South have their obvious differences, but they are far more alike in their Confucian roots than people realize (before the rift of the still relatively recent Korean War, the Korean people had been more or less unified under one state for a thousand years).
In advance of my criminal trial in Seoul in 1994—I had stupidly mailed myself hashish from the Philippines; the indiscretion of a 23-year-old—Korean guards and prisoners at the Seoul Detention Center urged and recommended me, as they did the other foreign prisoners as well, not only to plead guilty to my offense (I was guilty) but more importantly to show remorse in front of the judges. To do so, I heard from every corner, I should learn how to say something specific in Korean: Young so hey choo ship sho. “Please grant me mercy” (the ship sho at the end connoting great respect and formality).
Many of the other foreign prisoners were taught this phrase as well, and like me said it in court to the judges. Even if we knew nothing else in Korean, we should know this phrase, so important was it for conveying the proper and practical attitude as suspects, detainees, and lawbreakers.
Asking for mercy didn’t mean that you would be sent home and all would be forgiven without a price, but it did affect the judges’ sentencing, allowing them to exercise leniency, and it at least gave you a chance of improving your situation and winning sympathy from the authorities.
The other tack—denial, resistance, lack of contrition—especially if there is evidence of your guilt, is untenable and unadvisable in the Confucian moral cosmos and almost always, as I saw, results in harsher treatment and punishment. Indeed, even if there is scant evidence of your guilt, you are still up against it just being suspected of some wrongdoing: even in South Korea, the democratic, modern half with a far more progressive notion of human rights, the conviction rate in criminal trials is amazingly high, above 95 percent; so imagine then what it must be like in the North.
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oliverckerr
Behind closed doors and backwater diplomacy the deal for their freedom is more than likely in the works, set up in advance, so Hillary gets to build up Bill.
Otherwize Clintstone would not be making the trip.
(Vote for me - we are a team - plus we got valid birth cirtificates - unspoken words to that effect).
For a humorous look atf Clintstone treason based on triple xxx bimbo stuff you don't know about:
michaelslevinson.com/newworld.pdf
After the download read a few pages then, using find slot, enter 'Shrimp throat Kim Sue.' Enjoy the read.
rickjr82
Old news, is there any moderates/liberals who haven't commited treason? This whole country is a liberal conspiracy dating back from 1776.
Click the link above for 200 years of democratic cover-ups and evilness!
oliverckerr
Why don't you do the download michaelslevinson.com/newworld.pdf and then, using the 'find' slot read those pages. You will be reading about things you have not seen before - documented, but ignored. You will understand a whole bunch of things. Don't be afraid.
rickjr82
link is broken.
velvetsmog
Aren't you tired of being an ideological shill? Two women's lives are at stake and all you can do is bring up BS like this?
OHNOTAGAIN
Bill Richardson could have made the same move. Clinton needed the press....they are bidding for a run in 2012, trust me.
oliverckerr
Correct. You win a free copy of "New World Hors D'oeuvres."
michaelslevinson.com/newworld.pdf
OHNOTAGAIN
Very interesting read!! Some I already knew but some I never heard about before. I can see how all this happened. My hope is that many Americans wake up and realize that Dems and Repub in Wash. are very much cut from the same cloth. Our future is predestined from the day of its inception, just look to your dollar bill and ask yourself why the satanic symbols? Did the forefathers know what they were doing, using those symbols? Why latin on American money?
rickjr82
Yeah, Bill Richardson and Bill Clinton are both probably equal in the world's eyes.
Let's go ahead and call Hillary the front runner now, Obama's "real" birth certificate has been released- it's only a matter of time. Clinton/Taitz '12!
Will they beat Palin/Keyes?
bangwhistle
No way, Mr. Conspiracy Theory Dude. The Clintons are doing just fine right where they are, and, I would never trust you.
queensplate
oh oh....billy's been let off his leash
Federalist
He is the former President of the United States. We should not be calling him Bubba. If we don't respect our elected leaders, why should other nations and enemies respect them?
rickjr82
Amen, I could not agree more. There needs to be a list of approved names for all political figures.
Part of our appeal throughout the world is the reverence we treat our leaders with, when we call our president "Supreme Leader," they know we mean it.
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sonofloud
Time to use the carrot because 8 years of the stick hasn't worked out very well has it?
devilsadvocate
Is North Korea being offered a carrot rather than the stick bc of the new administration's different approach? I tend to believe so, but you also cannot deny that North Korea, with these American captives, has additional leverage to use in its own favor.
sonofloud
I'm referring to diplomacy being the carrot opposed to calling them evil so it's a matter of degree.
Yes most certainly they have additional leverage with the Americans who illegally crossed their border.
"Some analysts suggested North Korea would see her husband's trip as a reward for bad behaviour.
But Pinkston argued: "If there's nothing but punishment all the time, what incentive do people have to cooperate and do anything good?"
kzcreate
Thank God this is happening!!!I pray he finally brings them home safely to their familes!!!!
Annie57
This article provides a fascinating insight into the Korean mindset. Seems to me that sending Bill there is a good step, and will, I hope, end up with the release of the journalists. I really don't see this as a political gambit.
rickjr82
They just want attention and BC is a superstar.
bhavanibbana
That's it. Back under the bridge!
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piktor
AP REPORTS "AMERICAN JOURNALISTS PARDONED BY N. KOREA"
piktor
This is the AP report:
http://tinyurl.com/l3lxck
Chuckv
Thomas fails to distinguish between to types of criminals and gives so potentially very bad advice. He committed a real crime: drug smuggling. The two women (so far as we know) committed only a technical crime: they accidentally crossed from China into N. Korea.
There is nothing particularly Confucian about saying "I am sorry" to a judge at sentencing. I was a trial lawyer and helping a client prepare to do this is part of the job. The trick is trying to make a plausible argument when it is the 23rd time the client has been convicted. That is what separates the women from the girls.
But if you are accused of spying or some other political crime, then it is a whole different ball game. The police will put great pressure on you to get a signed confession. Don't do it. Don't believe them when they tell you that you will be released just as soon as you sign. Demand to see someone from the American embassy.
As for the nasty remarks about the Clintons, our government is supposed to protect us from international criminals and nutjobs. We have a right to expect that Navy SEALs will take out pirates or that a former President will negotiate on our behalf. Sometimes the United States government must go to extraordinary lengths for the sake of one or two citizens. I am proud.
DBFan2009
excellent post, chucky.
mystic
"our government is supposed to protect us from international criminals .."
What happens if OUR government is an international criminal, you know like the one who lied about WMD and then murdered over a million people, like the one who our current president is supposed to protect us from by prosecuting war crimes but is complicit himself? What then?
piktor
AP Video of Clinton N. Korea visit:
http://tinyurl.com/n4he2h
Brendino
Bill Clinton gets it done again.
bangwhistle
Look, people, President Clinton went over there and got the two young ladies out of the clutches of a country run by wacko-imbeciles (like this country for the preceding 8 years).
He got them out, and if he hadn't gone there they would still be in custody. So hurrah for Mr. Clinton, Mrs. Clinton, President Obama. . . on and on.. and especially to the majority of Americans with the common sense to vote in a President who can get things done (and has wisely picked
extraordinary people to help him). I am happy for the two young ladies and their families. I wish some of you would chuck your cynicism for just a brief moment and be happy for them as well.
bom0513
When I first saw the headline of this article, I thought the writer must have been held in "North" Korean prison. As a Korean(yes, south), I can't really agree with the premises of this story. It's like someone who had been jailed in Texas writes about Cuban prison just because the guards had the same hair color. Confucianism may be a factor, but you need many more layers of knowledge to understand the specific situations in North Korea.
That said, I am happy that the journalists are finally out.
nortonclybourn
Thomas's crime may have been the "stupid indiscretion" of a 23 year old, but he has no such excuse for this self-aggrandizing and ignorant story, which implies that all those Koreans are alike, maligns the journalists, and attributes Confucian values to a criminal despot. My question is, who asked him, and why give him a forum?
johnkangyi
One lands in South Korean prison for smuggling hashish and all of a sudden you become credible in predicting Clinton's success?
Few issues with this article. The sprinkling of Confucianism as some explanation of North Korea's behavior has no connection, and if anything just plays into the whole sterotypical categorization of what is "Asian" behavior. North Korea did what any isolated rogue state would do.
Thomas's experience in a South Korean prison for breaking an actual law has no coorelation with these journalist who were imprisoned on the facade of breaking the law.
What we do know is that Clinton came to Pyongyang on softer terms that Kim Jong Il appreciated - apolgetic and conciliatory. By no means does this mean the US got suckered into some defeatist position as the article would imply. We still haven't given them unilateral talks - now that would be a "Young so hey choo ship sho" reply.
Thank you.
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