EPICANTHUS

(North Korean news agency KCNA announced Sunday evening —1:30 p.m. June 8 in Pyongyang— that American journalists Euna Lee, 36, and Laura Ling, 32, both of Los Angeles, have been convicted and sentenced to 12 years hard labor for the “grave crime” they committed against North Korea.)

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Veteran TV newswoman Lisa Ling led the families of Euna Lee and Laura Ling, two American journalists held in North Korea for border violations and “hostile acts” on a well-orchestrated, one-day media blitz of NBC, CNN and ABC June 1 and issued an emotional appeal for their release on humanitarian grounds. (Ms. Ling is the older sister of jailed Current TV managing editor Laura Ling.)

But there were subjects that were apparently off-limits to the interviewers that day—Matt Lauer (The Today Show), Larry King (Larry King Live) and Bob Woodruff (Nightline)—and despite his shaky credentials as a journalist only the suspender-ed septuagenarian dared to broach one of them: whether Lisa Ling herself had ever reported from North Korea under false pretenses. Here’s the elder Ling sister dancing around King’s question: Have you ever been in North Korea?

Not germane? In June 2006, Lisa Ling and Australian cameraman Brian Green, snuck into North Korea posing as members of  a medical delegation headed by Nepalese eye surgeon Dr. Sanduk Ruit. Images captured using miniature hidden cameras were combined with U.S. State Dept. and Dept. of Defense-provided footage and the result was Undercover in North Korea for the National Geographic Channel’s Inside series which aired in April 2007. Below is an excerpt from that controversial project critics termed one-dimensional propaganda “offering very little breadth and even less depth of interesting or new information. Lisa Ling is clearly over her head in terms of trying to report on something as weighty as geopolitics. Her style is trite and ill-prepared, over dramatized.”

Missing from MSM coverage of this worsening international incident is the real skinny on mysterious Vanguard Journalism executive producer Mitchell Koss, the veteran newsman who witnessed the capture of Euna Lee and Laura Ling. Koss, a 53-year-old 56-year-old Glendale, Calif. resident, reportedly eluded North Korean border guards back on March 17. He was briefly held by Chinese authorities and then released. After returning to the United States, Koss has refused all requests for interviews and has dropped out of sight. What if anything has Koss told the families of the imprisoned journalists?

—babamoto