2010

Somewhere Inside by Laura Ling and Lisa Ling

The summer reading assignment for all incoming students is Somewhere Inside by Laura Ling and Lisa Ling. This Book will be used in your First Year Experience course this fall.  Additionally, the author will be giving a lecture on campus on October 19, 2010.

On March 17, 2009 Laura Ling and her colleague Euna Lee were working on a documentary about North Korea defectors who were fleeing the desperate conditions in their homeland.  While filming on the Chinese-North Korean border, they were chased down by North Korean soldiers who violently apprehended them.  Laura and Euna were charged with trespassing and "hostile acts," and imprisoned by Kim Jong Il's notoriously secretive Communist state.  Kept totally apart, they endured months of interrogations and eventually a trial before North Korea's highest court.  They were the first Americans ever to be sentensed to twelve years of hard labor ina prison campu in North Korea.