What I learned as a prisoner in North Korea | Euna Lee

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4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 29 September 2017

⏱️ 12 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In March 2009, North Korean soldiers captured journalist Euna Lee and her colleague Laura Ling while they were shooting a documentary on the border with China. The courts sentenced them to 12 years of hard labor, but American diplomats eventually negotiated their release. In this surprising, deeply human talk, Lee shares her experience living as the enemy in a detention center for 140 days -- and the tiny gestures of humanity from her guards that sustained her.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This TED Talk features journalist
0:02.5	Una Lee recorded live at TEDx Indiana University
0:06.3	2016.
0:09.6	I recently read about what the young
0:12.1	generation of workers won in Harvard Business Review.
0:16.4	One thing that stuck out to me was
0:18.3	don't just talk about impact, but make an impact.
0:24.2	I'm a little bit older than you, maybe much older than you, but this is the exact
0:30.5	same goal that I had when I was in college.
0:34.5	I wanted to make my own impact for those who live under injustice.
0:39.6	The reason that I became a documentary journalist, the reason I became the prisoner in North Korea for 140 days.
0:49.4	It was March 17th, 2009.
0:52.9	It's the same Patrick's Day for all of you, but it was the day that turned my life upside down.
1:00.9	My team and I were making a documentary about North Korean refugees living below human life in China.
1:10.0	We were at the border.
1:12.6	It was our last day of filming.
1:16.6	There's no wire fence or bars
1:20.6	or sign to show that it is the border.
1:22.6	But this is a place where a lot of North Korean defectors
1:26.6	use as an escape route.
1:29.8	It was still winter, and the river was frozen.
1:35.2	When we're in the middle of the river, on the frozen river,
	...

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