Recently, Laura Ling was on Oprah, Larry King, and Today Show promoting her story and book. She opened up on what happened to her and Euna Lee while imprisoned in North Korea. While we only posted clips, we found this 22-minute interview between Laura Ling and Mariana van Zeller. She reveals details about the human trafficking story she and producer Euna Lee were investigating before being apprehended and then held in North Korea.

Get Laura and Lisa Ling’s book “Somewhere Inside: One Sister’s Captivity in North Korea and the Other’s Fight to Bring Her Home”.

Captive in North Korea with Laura Ling

Laura Ling broke her silence about her North Korea ordeal. Along with her sister Lisa Ling, she hit the talk show circuit to talk about her experience in North Korea along with promoting her new book about the whole situation. The sisters hit Orpah, Larry King, and Today Show. Read more about what happened here. Here’s more about the book:

On March 17, 2009, Laura Ling and her colleague Euna Lee were working on a documentary about North Korean 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 sentenced to twelve years of hard labor in a prison camp in North Korea.

When news of the arrest reached Laura’s sister, journalist Lisa Ling, she immediately began a campaign to get her sister released, one that led her from the State Department to the higher echelons of the media world and eventually to the White House.

Somewhere Inside reveals for the first time Laura’s gripping account of what really happened on the river, her treatment at the hands of North Korean guards, and the deprivations and rounds of harrowing interrogations she endured. She speaks movingly about the emotional toll inflicted on her by her incarceration, including the measures she took to protect her sources and her fears that she might never see her family again.

Lisa writes about her unrelenting efforts to secure Laura and Euna’s release. Offering insights into the vast media campaign spearheaded on the women’s behalf, Lisa also takes us deep into the drama involving people at the highest levels of government, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Vice President Al Gore, Senator John Kerry, and Governor Bill Richardson—intense discussions that entailed strategically balancing the agendas and good intentions of the various players. She also describes her role in the back-and-forth between North Korea’s demands and the dramatic rescue by former President Bill Clinton.

Though they were thousands of miles apart while Laura was in captivity, the Ling sisters’ relationship became a way for the reclusive North Korean government to send messages to the United States government, which helped lead to Laura and Euna’s eventual release.

Told in the sisters’ alternating voices, Somewhere Inside is a timely, inspiring, and page-turning tale of survival set against the canvas of international politics that goes beyond the headlines to reveal the impact on lives engulfed by forces beyond their control. But it is also a window into the unique bond these two sisters have always shared, a bond that sustained them throughout the most horrifying ordeal of their lives.

Get Laura and Lisa Ling’s book “Somewhere Inside: One Sister’s Captivity in North Korea and the Other’s Fight to Bring Her Home”.

Surviving North Korea, Laura Ling spent 140 Days in Captivity. She talks about her stomach ulcer. How it delayed her entrace into the labor camps and her experience with North Korean medical procedures.

Laura and Lisa Ling will discuss Laura’s imprisonment in North Korea with CNN’s Larry King

Journalist Lisa Ling says she feared for her sister Laura’s life as she remained in a North Korean prison accused of being a spy.

We’ve heard James Kwak on several programs the past week. He recently made an appearance on Bill Moyers Journal to talk about his book 13 Bankers.

How did Big Finance grow so powerful that its hijinks nearly brought down the global economy – and what hope is there for real reform with Washington politicians on Wall Street’s payroll? Bill Moyers talks with authors Simon Johnson and James Kwak, two of the nation’s most respected economic experts and authors of the new book 13 BANKERS: THE WALL STREET TAKEOVER AND THE NEXT FINANCIAL MELTDOWN.

The problem, according to Kwak, is that the legislation currently doesn’t address the central problem of the crisis, that America’s banks have grown ‘too big to fail.’ In fact, the problem has gotten worse, with just six banks holding assets in excess of 63% of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product. Kwak explains that the crisis actually made the surviving banks more powerful, “I think what’s remarkable is that it used to be maybe eight or nine banks. But what’s happened over the last two years, as Simon is saying, is that these banks have gotten bigger, because they’ve bought each other. They’ve become more powerful. And they have an even stronger market position in some key markets like credit cards, mortgages, equity underwriting, and derivatives.”

The Six Big Banks
The names of the six banking behemoths are no doubt familiar to most Americans. The four largest by assets — Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Citigroup — hold 39 percent of American’s deposits.

The six biggest commercial banks by deposit:

* Bank of America, $817.9 billion
* JPMorgan Chase Bank $618.1 billion
* Wachovia Bank $394.2 billion
* Wells Fargo Bank $325.4 billion
* Citibank $265.9 billion
* U.S. Bank $151.9 billion

James Kwak on Bill Moyers Journal

More about James Kwak

Photo by Robin Holland James Kwak is the co-author, along with Simon Johnson, of 13 BANKERS: THE WALL STREET TAKEOVER AND THE NEXT FINANCIAL MELTDOWN, and the co-founder/co-author of THE BASELINE SCENARIO. Kwak is currently a student at the Yale Law School. Previously, he was a management consultant at McKinsey and Company and co-founder of a successful software company. Kwak received an A.B. in Social Studies from Harvard College and an M.A. and a Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Berkeley.