US: Ling thanks 'supercool' Clinton team, feared labor camp
Thu Aug 6 01:46:47 EST 2009
BURBANK, California, Aug 5 AFP - Laura Ling has thanked Bill Clinton and his "supercool team" for winning her release from North Korea and said she feared before seeing him she was being taken to a hard labor camp.
"Thirty hours ago Euna Lee and I were prisoners in North Korea," Ling told hundreds of reporters on Wednesday as the pair were tearfully reunited with their families in Burbank, California.
"We feared that at any moment we could be sent to a hard labor camp and then suddenly we were told that we were going to a meeting. We were taken to a location and when we walked through the doors, we saw standing before us president Bill Clinton."
Ling and Lee, two American journalists, faced 12 years' hard labor before they were pardoned by North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il following Clinton's surprise mission - the highest-level US trip to North Korea in almost a decade.
