[6][7] In 2009, Ling and fellow journalist Euna Lee were detained in North Korea after they started filming refugees from the country who had crossed the river and entered China.
They were pardoned after former U.S. President Bill Clinton flew to North Korea to meet with Kim Jong-il and appeal on their behalf.
Both became journalists and her sister is a special correspondent for The Oprah Winfrey Show, National Geographic Explorer, and CNN.
[17][18] Next 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.
When Ling was captured and detained, she was undercover, making a documentary about North Korean defectors, who were primarily women.
She explored the dangers they faced after crossing the Chinese border at the Tumen River, including forced marriages and trafficking, deportation, and being criminalized.
[26] In 2015, Ling partnered with The ONE Campaign to make a documentary How Africa is Hacking Its Energy Crisis, which was posted on the Seeker Stories YouTube channel.
[28] 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.
[29] In June 2009, they were sentenced to 12 years in a labor prison for illegal entry into North Korea, and unspecified hostile acts.
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.
[35] 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 US President Jimmy Carter, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former US President Bill Clinton.
[36] Ling was pardoned along with Lee, and they returned to the United States following an unannounced visit to North Korea by Bill Clinton on August 4, 2009.
In 2011, Ling received the McGill Medal for Journalistic Courage from the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication.