Laura Ling

Laura Ling (born December 1, 1976) is an American journalist and writer. She worked for Current TV, which until 2013 was owned by former Vice President Al Gore, as a correspondent and vice president of its Vanguard Journalism Unit, which produced the Vanguard TV series. She was the host and reporter on E! Investigates, a documentary series on the E! Network. In November 2014, it was announced that Ling joined Discovery Digital Networks as its Director of Development.

Ling is the sister of Lisa Ling, who is a special correspondent for The Oprah Winfrey Show, National Geographic Explorer, and CNN. In 2009, Laura Ling and fellow journalist Euna Lee were detained in North Korea after they started filming refugees from North Korea who had crossed the river and entered China; many of these refugees were women, and once across the border, they were often sold as brides. Laura Ling says the North Korean guardsdragged her across the border. Once in North Korean cells they were tried and convicted, then subsequently pardoned after former U.S. President Bill Clinton flew to North Korea to meet with Kim Jong-il.

Ling's father Doug is an immigrant born in mainland China during the 1920s; her mother Mary Mei-yan (née Wang) is an immigrant from Tainan, Taiwan. They divorced when Laura was four years old and her sister Lisa was seven. Following the divorce, the two sisters were raised in Sacramento, California, by their father. Ling identifies as Chinese American. Ling attended Del Campo High School in Fair Oaks, California.

In 1998, Ling graduated with a communications degree from the UCLA. At UCLA Ling served as a student analyst for the Center for Communication Policy. There, sheworked on the Violence Assessment Project studying television programs.

Ling's career as a journalist began when she became a correspondent for KCET's SoCal Connected and producer at Channel One News. She co-created Breaking it Down, a documentary series on MTV that aired between 1999 and 2001. Afterward, Ling joined Current TV, where she reported on issues about Cuba, Indonesia, the Philippines, Turkey, the West Bank, and the Amazon River, as well as about shantytowns in Sao Paulo, Brazil, gangs and homeless teens in Los Angeles, and underground churches in China.Prior to her detention, she had been reporting about the Mexican Drug War, and at the time of her capture, Ling was undercover making a documentary about North Korean defectors, who were primarily women, and the dangers they faced once across the Chinese border at the Tumen River including forced marriages and trafficking, deportation, and being viewed as a criminal.

Ling hosted a one-hour news show on E! Network, entitled E! Investigates, which premiered on December 8, 2010. The show targeted a younger audience and focused on pop culture. Her second show on E! was called Society X with Laura Ling, which aired on October 3, 2013. In addition, Ling hosted a news program on KCET, which focused on local news in Los Angeles; the show aired nightly. Ling has also worked on projects for Nightline, NBC, PBS, and The WB (now The CW).

In 2015, Ling partnered with The ONE Campaign to make a documentary How Africa is Hacking the Its Energy Crisis, which was posted on the Seeker Stories YouTube channel. Ling also created and reported on Rituals with Laura Ling, which was also posted to the Seeker Stories YouTube channel.

2009 detention in North Korea

In the last week of March 2009, North Korea announced that two American journalists were detained and would be indicted and tried for illegally entering the country.On May 3, 2009, it was officially announced that Ling and fellow journalist Euna Lee were the journalists that had been detained, after they attempted to film refugees along the border with China.In June 2009, they were sentenced to 12 years in a labor prison for illegal entry into North Korea, and unspecified hostile acts.Of the trial, Ling stated, "I had tried to prepare myself for a lengthy sentence, but really nothing could prepare me for the verdict when I heard the words twelve years...he said, no forgiveness, no appeal...And I was wondering if those words meant that the window of opportunity had closed and my fate was sealed." Many in the media called it a show trial.The US government made diplomatic efforts to oppose this sentence before their release in August 2009.

Lisa Ling stated that when her sister and Lee left the United States, they never intended to cross into North Korea.She also revealed that her sister required medical treatment for an ulcer.

In 2010, Ling co-wrote with her sister Lisa a memoir, Somewhere Inside: One Sister's Captivity in North Korea and the Other's Fight to Bring Her Home.

Diplomatic Crisis

Many in both the United States and South Korea have also accused Ling and Lee of creating a diplomatic crisis with North Korea during a particularly tense emergency that was already ongoing between North Korea and the United States. These accusations have been addressed in both Ling and Lee's memoirs. Some human rights activists in South Korea have accused Lee and Ling of needlessly placing North Korean refugees in danger by not being more careful with their tapes and notebooks in the event they were apprehended. In an interview with NPR, Lisa Ling said of the political climate with North Korea, "The tensions on the Korean peninsula had been worsening and becoming increasingly more severe, and some say that it was one of the low points in U.S.-North Korea relations." In the efforts to negotiate Ling and Lee's release, diplomatic envoys were brought up as an option, and many different envoys were considered including the Governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson, former President Jimmy Carter, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and finally President Bill Clinton, who was ultimately accepted as an envoy by the North Koreans. Ling was pardoned along with Lee, and they returned to the United States following an unannounced visit to North Korea by former US President Bill Clinton on August 4, 2009.

Ling was named one of Glamour magazine's Women of the Year in 2009. In 2011, Ling received the McGill Medal for Journalistic Courage from the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, and in 2014, she won an Emmy Award and an Edward R. Murrow Award (Radio Television Digital News Association) for SoCal Connected. In 2012, Ling was inducted into the San Juan Education Foundation Hall of Fame. As the Director of Development and Correspondent for Discovery Digital Networks, Ling won a Gracie Award in 2016.

While she was the vice president of Vanguard, the show won several awards including a Peabody Award, two Emmy nominations, a Prism Award, and an Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award.

Laura Ling is married to Iain Clayton, a financial analyst. On June 3, 2010, Ling gave birth to a girl, naming her Li Jefferson Clayton, in Burbank, California. Laura and her husband decided to name the baby Li, after Laura's sister Lisa, and chose Jefferson since it was President Clinton's middle name. They also have a son named Kai, born on December 18, 2013.

• Ling, Laura; Ling, Lisa (2010). Somewhere Inside: One Sister's Captivity in North Korea and the Other's Fight to Bring Her Home. William Morrow. ISBN 978-0062000675.