In peril in Pyongyang? How jailed female journalists were in greater danger sharing a plane with Bill Clinton

Taking flight: Bill Clinton greets the women as they board his plane at Pyongyang airport

The story has all the ingredients of a Hollywood blockbuster. Two beautiful girls in peril, an evil North Korean dictator holding them captive and, riding to the rescue, Slick Willy himself, former President Bill Clinton.



As journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee collapsed, sobbing tears of joy, into the arms of their relieved families after being pardoned from a sentence of 12 years’ hard labour in North Korea, their palpable relief was perhaps enhanced by the flood of lucrative film, book and interview offers that came pouring in.



The pair had been arrested on the North Korea-China border last March, accused of illegal entry and spying.

Then, last Wednesday, the silver-tongued Clinton burst back on to the global political scene by flying to the world’s most secretive state for what its regime described as ‘sincere and exhaustive discussions’ with leader Kim Jong Il.



Little over 24 hours later, the diplomatic mission apparently a huge success, Clinton was on a flight back to California with the women in tow to be greeted by the world’s media.



As of last night, the bidding war for the first interview with the two heroines had reportedly reached ‘the mid six figures’. Book publisher HarperCollins is said to have offered a cool $1million for a ‘warts and all’ account of their life during 140 days ‘behind enemy lines’.



A movie deal will surely follow. Laura’s Scottish husband Iain Clayton, a 35-year-old mathematician turned financial analyst, told The Mail on Sunday from the steps of their modest ranch-style home in the less than salubrious suburb of North Hollywood: ‘I’m afraid I can’t say anything. No one is allowed to talk. We are in the process of doing deals and I don’t want to mess anything up. Everything is being handled by our media adviser.’

Time to celebrate: Laura Ling, top, and Euna Lee arriving back in California

Emotional: Freed journalist Euna Lee, left, is embraced by her husband Michael Saldate and daughter Hannah safely in California



Applause rings out: Bill Clinton claps as freed Laura Ling is hugged by former Vice President Al Gore at Bob Hope Airport in Burbank, California

Most of the breathless accounts of Clinton’s mercy dash to North Korea – aboard a luxury Boeing 737 jet belonging to Liz Hurley’s billionaire ex, Steve Bing – have taken up the story from the moment Laura and Euna were imprisoned back in March.



But who are these two fresh-faced women? What were they doing in North Korea, undoubtedly one of the most dangerous and repressed places in the world, and how on earth did they get themselves into what a friend jauntily described on one website as ‘a bit of a disastrous pickle’?



A Mail on Sunday investigation has unearthed some rather surprising facts about the pair – facts that show they were hopelessly ill-prepared for their ‘mission’ to the Chinese-Korean border, that they were working for a minor television organisation run by a former ambulance-chasing lawyer and, while they no doubt did not intend to be captured, the hapless twosome ended up as valuable pawns in an international game of bluff and double bluff.

Indeed, from the whole tawdry affair only one clear winner has emerged – an exuberant Bill Clinton – even if, according to an insider, ‘the joke in the White House was that the girls were safer in North Korea than on the plane going home with Bill’.



Yet much of the pressure for their release was generated in the UK by the family of Laura’s husband Iain. A letter-writing campaign was co-ordinated by his older brother Charles Clayton, who lives in Oxford. Other family members appealed to the North Koreans through their London ambassador.



Laura, 32, describes herself as a ‘Chinese American’, but a friend said: ‘She was brought up as a true Valley girl [an upper middle-class girl]. She’s about as Chinese as the cuisine at Chin Chin [a popular Californian-Chinese restaurant chain].’



Laura is said to be the duo’s ‘driving force’. Euna, 36, who had little journalism experience and counted making a yoga video as a career highlight, was her devoted lackey, who reportedly held the video camera as Laura ‘danced around’ on the North Korean side of the border.



For Euna, who was born in South Korea but moved to California when she was a university student, it was her first overseas assignment. The trip was Laura’s second ‘dangerous’ foreign job for Current, a Left-wing cable television network based in San Francisco that rather grandly aspires to ‘democratise’ the news.



Fronted by Clinton’s former Vice-President Al Gore, now a bona fide green activist, the station is the brainchild of Joel Hyatt, a fabulously wealthy 59-year-old lawyer who made his fortune running a chain of store-front legal offices.



In television adverts, he offered to launch massive lawsuits seeking compensation for the poor, saying: ‘I’m Joel Hyatt and you have my word on it.’ Critics, however, denounced him as a ‘shameless ambulance-chaser’.



The two women were sent to China in March to do a report about North Korean refugees pouring over the border. A source familiar with Current said: ‘It was the sort of bleeding-hearts liberal story that would play well to their target market. But then Laura decided to take it a step further.’

A hug for mum: Euna Lee is swept off her feet by Hannah and husband Michael Saldate

Laura, who is fiercely ambitious, has spent her life in the shadow of her more successful older sister, Lisa Ling. Both were raised by Doug Ling, a 72-year-old Chinese immigrant, in the middle-class, mostly white, mid-Californian city of Sacramento.

Lisa went from an early job in children’s television to an illustrious national career, co-hosting The View, the US equivalent of Loose Women, seen by 24million viewers a day.



She has been asked by talk-show doyenne Oprah Winfrey to host her own daytime show, due to start next year, and is married to a wealthy oncologist, Dr Paul Song. Their wedding was reported in the celebrity-obsessed People magazine as ‘Lisa Ling marries her Dr McDreamy’.



Jim Jordon, the sisters’ former high-school English teacher, said Laura was a scrupulous student who set her heart on following Lisa into journalism. ‘Laura worked on the school paper but she was just different from her sister,’ he said. ‘And more determined, in a sense.’

Relief: Laura Ling, top, and Euna Lee disembark from the plane that brought them, along with Bill Clinton, back from North Korea

Reunited: Euna Lee, followed behind by Laura Ling, runs towards her family, front right, as Laura bursts into tears on sight of her husband Iain Clayton, back right

The Mail on Sunday has spoken to a long-time Democratic Party insider, who is a confidant of Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary, now President Obama’s Secretary of State.

‘Laura is sweet but not very street-smart,’ said the insider. ‘She was sent to China to make a routine programme about refugees crossing the border from North Korea but, according to Kim Jong Il’s people, she was walking across the border and leaping about.



‘The official North Korean report said Euna was holding the camera. Of course, there was speculation they were working for the CIA. Forget that. This has been a farce. It couldn’t be more embarrassing for Obama and the agency. No one hired these girls. No one in Washington had ever heard about them until they were captured by the North Koreans.



‘From everything I have heard about Laura, she is a Valley girl who wanted to play in the big league.



I think she did this as a stunt to compete with her sister. Lisa Ling works with people like Oprah. Laura earns peanuts at a network no one has heard of. This was her big chance.’



On March 17, Laura and Euna were arrested by North Korean soldiers after they ignored orders to stop filming. Then they vanished into the maw of the most isolated nation on Earth.

Warm reception: Laura Ling, front left, speaks into a microphone as former President Bill Clinton, back left, looks on with former former Vice President Al Gore, right, who has his arm around Ling's fellow journalist Euna Lee

Don't let go: Still clutching Hannah, Euna Lee gets a hug from Al Gore

Kim Jong Il has ruled it with absolute authority since 1994. He was born in the Forties, but his exact birthday is asecret. He wears platform shoes and a teased hairdo and is reputed to have had a string of lovers, both male and female. His hobby is watching old Hollywood movies including Rambo, Friday The 13th and James Bond.

When the girls were taken into custody, he was preparing to test a ballistic missile capable of carrying nuclear warheads.



A US State Department source said: ‘These two naive girls became useful pawns in a much bigger chess game. The North Koreans’ idea was to put them on trial, sentence them to prison camp and offer to free them for concessions.’



In fact, their ‘ordeal’ appears to have been far from tough. According to Professor Han Park, an American academic who was visiting North Korea at the time, they were housed in a guest villa designed for foreign visitors outside the capital of Pyongyang.



Professor Park said that Korean officials laughed at any suggestion that the women were receiving harsh treatment. ‘We are not Guantanamo,’ he was told.

The women were allowed to receive daily letters from their husbands and parcels from home.



Euna is married to struggling actor Michael Saldate, who has been in such B-movie classics as Absolute Debauchery and Man, Moment, Machine. They have a five-year-old daughter, Hana.



Laura’s husband, Iain, said he sent her ‘things she loved, like dried squid and beef jerky’.



In a letter dated May 15 – read aloud at a candlelit vigil for the two women, the organisers of which included a Broadway theatre publicist – Laura related that her routine included yoga and meditation. She said: ‘I breathe deeply and think about positive things that happened in the day.’

Jet-set: The private plane paid for by billionaire businessman Steve Bing, a friend of Clinton's, which brought the journalists back to the Bob Hope Airport in California



Indeed, her worst complaint was that her rice tasted like ‘rocks’.

The Clinton confidant said: ‘The women were a prize. Most people in North Korea would be lucky to be treated the way those girls were.’



For Bill Clinton, it was an easy mission. In a phone call to her husband a month ago, Laura said that if Clinton turned up, she and Euna would be granted amnesty.



The Clinton insider said: ‘Obama’s people suggested sending Al Gore, but Kim Jong Il only wanted Bill.



He idolises the former President because he thinks he is a virile stud with influence in Hollywood.’



Just as Laura fretted she was being overshadowed by her sister Lisa, Bill Clinton has found it increasingly hard to reconcile himself to life on the sidelines. When asked to undertake a ‘sensitive’ mission to ‘rescue’ the pair, he jumped at the chance.

He was picked up at an airport near his home in the bucolic New York suburb of Chappaqua by a private jet laid on by the Dow Chemical company. It flew him 3,000 miles to Burbank, California, where he boarded a Boeing 737 provided by Steve Bing, one of his best friends and a generous contributor to the Clinton Foundation, the charity with which he has been occupying his post-Presidential years.



On arrival in North Korea, he was chauffeured to the Presidential Palace, where he was photographed posing alongside a triumphant Kim Jong Il. According to an observer, no words were exchanged. The women walked in, weeping, as they were told that they were being released.



The Clinton confidant said: ‘This wasn’t about the women – this was about a PR coup.



Barack Obama may have defeated Bill’s wife but this is the Clintons’ revenge. The North Koreans are talking about nuclear disarmament but they say they will talk only to Bill. It’s a win-win situation for everyone except Obama.



‘Two greenhorn journalists stand to make a financial killing. And Bill is on a roll now that everybody has bought into the official story.’

