Laura Ling

Her father, Chung Teh "Douglas" Ling, is a Chinese immigrant from Hong Kong, where he was born in 1937.

She has an older sister Lisa Ling, who is now a journalist.

Ling's parents divorced when she was four years old.

Following the divorce, she and her sister were raised by their father in Sacramento, California.

Ling attended Del Campo High School in Fair Oaks, California.

Laura Ling (born December 1, 1976) is an American journalist and writer.

She worked for Current TV as a correspondent and vice president of its Vanguard Journalism Unit, which produced the Vanguard TV series.

She was the host and reporter on E! Investigates, a documentary series on the E! Network.

In 1998, Ling graduated with a communications degree from UCLA.

At UCLA Ling served as a student analyst for the Center for Communication Policy.

There, she worked on the Violence Assessment Project studying television programs.

She first worked as a correspondent for KCET's SoCal Connected and as a producer at Channel One News.

She co-created Breaking it Down, a documentary series on MTV that aired between 1999 and 2001.

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.

Prior to her detention, she had reported on the Mexican Drug War.

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.

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.

Many of these refugees were women, and once across the border, they were often sold as brides.

Ling said that the North Korean guards dragged her across the border.

Once in North Korea the two women were tried and convicted.

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.

Ling and her older sister, Lisa Ling, are daughters of Taiwanese and Chinese immigrants.

They grew up in Carmichael and Sacramento, California.

Both became journalists and her sister is a special correspondent for The Oprah Winfrey Show, National Geographic Explorer, and CNN.

Laura Ling was born in Carmichael, California.

Her mother, Mary Mei-yan (née Wang), is a Taiwanese immigrant from Tainan, Taiwan.

She formerly served as the head of the Los Angeles office of the Formosan Association for Public Affairs.

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.

On May 3, 2009, it was announced that Ling and Euna Lee were the two who had been detained, after they attempted to film refugees and defectors along the border with China.

In June 2009, they were sentenced to 12 years in a labor prison for illegal entry into North Korea, and unspecified hostile acts.

Of the trial, Ling later said,

"'I had tried to prepare myself for a lengthy sentence, but really nothing could prepare me for the verdict when I heard the words twelve years...he said, no forgiveness, no appeal...And I was wondering if those words meant that the window of opportunity had closed and my fate was sealed.'"

Ling hosted a one-hour news show on E! Network, entitled E! Investigates, which premiered on December 8, 2010.

The show targeted a younger audience and focused on pop culture.

Her second show on E! was called Society X with Laura Ling, which aired on October 3, 2013. In addition, Ling hosted a nightly news program on KCET, which focused on local news in Los Angeles.

Ling has also worked on projects for Nightline, NBC, PBS, and The WB (now The CW).

In November 2014, Ling joined Discovery Digital Networks as its Director of Development.

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.

Ling also created and reported on Rituals with Laura Ling, which was also posted to the Seeker Stories YouTube channel.