Laura Ling on Imprisonment in North Korea | Inside North Korea

In March of 2009, I was working on a documentary about North Korean defectors, people who are fleeing the very desperate conditions in North Korea. During that time, we were filming along the Tumen River. This is the river that separates China and North Korea, and it was frozen at the time. So, we were literally standing on that frozen river when two North Korean soldiers spotted us. They chased us into China and then very violently dragged my colleague, Yuna Lee, and me across that river into North Korea in the middle of the night.

While my husband and I were sleeping, my sister's husband called and he said, "Laura was abducted by North Korean soldiers." My heart just sank. I was pretty bruised up and bloodied, and I just tried to keep my wits about me, but I was so scared. We were eventually transferred to Pyongyang. Yuna and I were separated for the remainder of our captivity, and that’s when the real formal interrogation began. I was grilled every day for four hours on end, day after day.

One of the most difficult parts was trying to convince them that I was not a spy. It didn't help that the co-founder and chairman of the company that I worked for at the time, Current TV, was former Vice President Al Gore. So, that immediately made them suspicious that I had ties to the government. One day, my interrogator came in and he was carrying a file. It was all about my sister and the project she worked on. He was very upset, very upset, very suspicious, and he immediately accused both Lisa and me of trying to bring down the North Korean government.

Yuna and I became the first Americans to be tried in North Korea's highest court. On the day of our sentencing, the judge and his two associates left the room to deliberate. They left for five minutes and returned with their judgment, and that was 12 years of hard labor. Back in 2006, we interviewed a North Korean defector who had spent time in one of the notorious North Korean prisons, and he described it as just an absolutely heinous and insidious place to be. So, the thought of my sister going there was just unimaginable, and I was terrified. I was absolutely terrified.

The judge shouted, "No forgiveness, no appeal," and I just clutched onto the podium. I was standing at a podium, and I just clutched onto it to keep from falling over.