{"id":18302,"date":"2015-02-13T03:02:27","date_gmt":"2015-02-13T03:02:27","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2025-10-15T01:10:57","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T01:10:57","slug":"how-lisa-ling-freed-her-sister-in-north-korea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?p=18302","title":{"rendered":"How Lisa Ling freed her sister in North Korea"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lisa and her sister Laura has recorded footage in the secretive dictatorship and smuggled it out in their underwear, before publishing a film criticizing North Korea’s government and health system. \u201cIt’s pretty fair to say that we became enemies of the state,\u201d she says.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Laura was sentenced to 12 years hard labour in a North Korean prison. \u201cI was stunned,” says Lisa. “She was in a country with which is the US had zero diplomatic relationship, about which hardly anything is known.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lisa used every resource she had to help get her freed, including getting ex-president Bill Clinton and politicians Al Gore and John Kerry involved.<\/p>\n

Lisa, a former host of The View, tried bargaining, pleading and campaigning, and through a series of cryptic telephone calls to Laura – who was under duress and scripted – organised a a high-profile diplomatic rescue mission.<\/p>\n

When her sister walked off the plane and onto US soil three months later, Lisa said: \u201cIt was the most beautiful sight I had ever experienced.\u201d<\/p>\n