Updated: 08/05/2009 11:15 AM KSTP.com | Print |  Email
By: Susanna Song

Answered prayer for journalists in North Korea!

As I write, I cannot adequately express the relief I feel.  I am in no way related to Euna Lee or Lisa Ling, but as a journalist and a person of Korean descent this story touches my heart in incomprehensive ways.

I have strong emotions when I think about the division in Korea-- how a country could remain so divisive, with polorizing ideologies.  It's frustrating to see Kim Jong il hold so much power, how my relatives and people who look just like me, are under his regime.

Then to think, young journalists in search for a story, whose interests and tenacity, (and perhaps naivety) led them to imprisonment, possibly for 12 years of hard labor, is truly incredible, undeniably because I could see myself in their shoes.  The freedoms we have in America are unparalleled elsewhere in the world, and nonexistent in North Korea.  I think I tend to forget.  I think the world may have ignored the seriousness involved in the stark contrast, until now... until human faces, two beautiful women, could share in their absence, this truth.

This story, their re-union, ends beautifully.  It could have ended 12 years from now, post-imprisonment.  But it didn't.  And for that, my heart celebrates!