As President Barack Obama basks in the adoration of the media, the captivity of three of their colleagues — one in Iran and two in North Korea — now looks very much like a calculated test of whether terrorism will be restored to its former place as a tolerated method of diplomacy. The new administration’s reaction thus far has seemed paralyzed and unprepared for the test that Joe Biden, after all, foretold months ago. Behind the gauzy curtain of atmospherics, apologies, and sanguine rhetoric about outreached hands, the fists of the thugs who mean us harm remain firmly clenched when they are not grasping for new weapons to use against us.

Maybe we can try for “ready from Day 102.”

The best known of America’s three newest hostages is Roxana Saberi, whom an Iranian court recently sentenced to eight years in prison for espionage. The White House’s reaction to the sentence was to say that it was “deeply disappointed,” renew its call for nuclear talks, and drop previous demands that Iran suspend its uranium enrichment first. The Iranians, who have usually played a more subtle game than the North Koreans, have since hinted that Saberi might be freed after what passes for appellate review in Iran, even as they announced further advances in a nuclear program that some in our government still pretend to want to stop. In Saberi, the Iranians may have chosen the wrong target. Accomplished, respected, and strikingly beautiful, Saberi has the potential to become a cause among both conservatives and liberals. Iran’s treatment of Saberi affirms the misogynistic and intolerant image that Iran’s rulers have done so much to earn. Even the Human Rights Industry briefly left Khalid Sheikh Mohammad’s pillow unfluffed and offered some words of protest.

Who still seriously doubts that Iran will test a nuclear bomb during President Obama’s first term?

North Korea, on the other hand, doesn’t really do “subtle.” On Tuesday, it had the chutzpah to demand that the U.N. Security Council apologize for the flaccid non-binding presidential statement it offered in lieu of any meaningful enforcement of the two Security Council resolutions North Korea’s recent missile test violated:

The UNSC should promptly make an apology for having infringed the sovereignty of the DPRK and withdraw all its unreasonable and discriminative “resolutions” and decisions adopted against the DPRK.

North Korea’s very ridiculousness can be (if this is the right word) disarming. Start with the acronym “DPRK” itself, which means “Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea.” Kim Jong Il’s resemblance to an unkempt fishwife, his regime’s profound economic retardation, and the stilted rhetoric of his state media — they have a peculiar fondness for the word “brigandish” — invite an easy ridicule that prevents too many of us from taking stock of the depth and scale of its brutality, a case of mass political cleansing that has had no equal in this world since Pol Pot’s overthrow. But at least we’ll be spared the sight of Kim Jong Il’s face on coffee mugs and tote bags. A million deaths is a statistic, but a bad haircut will not stand among the right-thinking.

Last month, the American reporters Euna Lee and Laura Ling were trying to help us take stock of North Korea’s tragedy along the Tumen River, which divides North Korea and China. On assignment with the new Current TV network, they were there to tell the forgotten story of a vast humanitarian tragedy, the flight of hundreds of thousands of North Koreans from their blighted prison of a homeland into the relative liberty and prosperity of China’s rust belt. Many of those refugees don’t survive the journey. NGO’s have recently reported that North Korea has placed snipers on the hilltops overlooking the river and ordered them to shoot those who try to cross. Others, like the woman shown in this video, drown in the river. In the winter, their bodies can lie frozen into the ice for weeks. Those who survive the journey face the constant risk of arrest by Chinese police, followed by deportation back to imprisonment or execution in a North Korean gulag, sometimes strung together with wires through their wrists or noses. Most of the North Korean women who make it to China are trafficked as slaves and sold off to as wives or prostitutes.

Recently, North Korea’s control of its northern border has been breaking down. The dependence of many North Koreans on commerce with China has weaned them of the state’s rations and created an underground economy in which women, heroin, and methampetamine are traded for food, radios, consumer goods, and prohibited South Korean DVD’s. Some Chinese boatmen had even gone into the business of leading human safaris along the south bank of the river. The erosion of the regime’s control of the border follows other reports of a breakdown of discipline and morale among North Korean border guards. All of this is possible because the cross-border commerce generates enough cash for traders and refugees to bribe border guards. It is also giving many North Koreans their first images of the relative prosperity that exists outside North Korea. To Kim Jong Il, this commerce poses an existential threat. He seeks to restore his control over the border as if his life depends on it.

On March 19th, by the banks of the Tumen River, Laura Ling and Euna Lee became a part of the story they were trying to tell when they were arrested by North Korean soldiers. Their American cameraman and their Chinese driver both escaped. By a remarkable coincidence, North Korea’s first arrest of American citizens in more than a decade came just two weeks before its missile test. North Korea has since announced that Ling and Lee will be tried for espionage. The maximum punishment for this offense is ten years in prison, although it seems unlikely that an American could survive that long in any of North Korea’s vast prison camps.

North Korea insists that Ling and Lee crossed the border illegally, but most of the available evidence suggests otherwise. The South Korean network YTN, citing “unnamed diplomatic sources,” initially reported that the North Korean guards had crossed the Tumen River into Chinese territory to abduct Ling and Lee. The BBC quoted the South Korean YTV network, which also reported that the North Koreans crossed the river to arrest the two women. YTV claimed to have gotten its information from “a South Korean government official.” A more recent Taipei Times report also claims, without elaboration, that “[t]here is evidence that the North Korean guards crossed the river and grabbed the women on the Chinese side, forcing them into North Korea at gunpoint.” Chun Ki Won, an intrepid South Korean activist and rescuer of North Koreans, told the New York Times that recently, North Korea has tried to lure foreigners into situations where it could kidnap them, and for what it’s worth, a well-informed source is telling me that our government also suspects that North Korea used Ling and Lee’s Chinese guide, who has since vanished, to lure them into a trap and kidnap them. Reporters Without Borders (RSF), which is petitioning for their release, suggests that North Korean guards regularly cross the border and “probably” abducted Ling and Lee from Chinese territory.

An alternative theory, suggested by Barbara Demick of the L.A. Times, is that Ling and Lee may have inadvertently crossed the border because of a recent drought that has dried up most of the river in that area.

At first, the State Department had also said that Ling and Lee were seized from Chinese territory. In the first hours after Ling and Lee were seized, spokeswoman Julie Reside said, “We are aware through reliable channels on the morning of March 17, that two American citizens were taken into custody across the Tumen River from China into North Korea by what appeared to be North Korean border guards.” State soon backtracked. Another spokesman later told ABC News that “the facts are not quite clear” and that there was “a lot of contradictory information.” Since then, our government has offered only a handful of statements expressing its hope that North Korea will release Ling and Lee.

A South Korean newspaper, citing “human intelligence” sources inside North Korea, reported that after they were seized, Ling and Lee were put into separate vehicles and bundled off to Pyongyang for “intense interrogation” designed to elicit videotaped confessions of espionage. The North Koreans have since permitted a Swedish diplomat a brief visit with Ling and Lee.

The legal definition of the term “international terrorism” is found at 18 U.S.C. sec. 2331:

As used in this chapter – (1) the term “international terrorism” means activities that … (B) appear to be intended — (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and (C) occur primarily outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States, or transcend national boundaries in terms of the means by which they are accomplished, the persons they appear intended to intimidate or coerce, or the locale in which their perpetrators operate or seek asylum;

Thus, if the North Koreans crossed the border to kidnap Laura Ling and Euna Lee, it would be an act of international terrorism against two U.S. citizens. This would not be completely unprecedented. In the last four decades alone, North Korea is suspected of kidnapping at least a dozen Japanese, hundreds of South Koreans, and citizens of France, China, Thailand, Lebanon, and Romania, among others.

In 2002, North Korea kidnapped a wheelchair-bound permanent U.S. resident, Rev. Kim Dong Shik, from Chinese territory, spirited him across the border into North Korea, and reportedly tortured him to death. Rev. Kim’s offense against His Porcine Majesty had been to assist North Korean refugees. One of the abductors, Ryu Young-Hwa, later infiltrated into South Korea, where he was arrested and convicted of Rev. Kim’s kidnapping. In 2005, then-Senator Barack Obama signed a letter from the entire Illinois congressional delegation — Rev. Kim’s U.S. citizen wife lives in Illinois — to the North Korean Ambassador to the United Nations. In letter, Obama and the other members vowed to oppose North Korea’s removal from the list of state sponsors of terrorism until the Rev. Kim or his remains were accounted for. In 2008, Obama broke that promise and supported North Korea’s de-listing, even without North Korea’s meaningful performance on North Korea’s now-abandoned promises to disclose and verifiably dismantle its nuclear weapons programs.

Will America abandon Laura Ling and Euna Lee, too? If only it could. In early April, a visiting delegation of congressional staffers was shocked to hear the Deputy Chief of Mission, William Stanton — no relation, I swear! — call Ling and Lee “stupid,” saying that their situation was “distracting from bigger issues,” which presumably refers to negotiating the purchase price of Kim Jong Il’s next mendacious promises. (Stanton, no doubt due to the strength of his suave diplomatic skills, is a contender to lead the American Institute for Taiwan, America’s de facto embassy in Taipei.) Joseph Yun, the Political Counselor at our embassy in Seoul, complained that because of Ling and Lee’s captivity, the United States would now “have to raise thousands of dollars,” presumably in ransom money. One of the appalled staffers returned to Washington and circulated a memo describing these comments to fellow staffers and members of Congress.

Although the United States has powerful and proven financial weapons for responding to acts of international terrorism, it seems far more likely that in due course, North Korea will be given some exorbitant ransom or bailout, and it won’t be in the “thousands.” New Mexico Governor “Kim Jong Bill” Richardson seems to be the most likely bagman.

President Obama can’t abandon Laura Ling to the gulag, however: today, he expressed “concern” about the situation. As it turns out, Laura’s sister is Lisa Ling of “The View,” “Oprah,” and most significantly, of the National Geographic documentary, “Inside North Korea.” In this fascinating report, Ling went undercover to accompany an eye doctor as he performed sight-restoring surgery on North Koreans who had blind for years. On seeing again for the first time, the patients — all under the watchful eye of the regime’s minders — expressed their effusive gratitude … to portraits of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. The documentary captured the North’s eerie, cultish enforced god-king-worship in very much the way that most journalists’ guided tours of Pyongyang seldom do. The North Koreans do not forget such slights easily.

One person who could help us get to the truth of the matter is the Current TV cameraman, who managed to escape. Like everyone else associated with Current TV — most conspicuously, the network’s co-founder, Al Gore — he’s refused all public comment and suspended his dedication to the telling of inconvenient truths (perhaps he’s trying to ignore it, as so many have ignored Manbearpig). This video at You Tube shows Current TV staff refusing to answer questions about Laura Ling and Euna Lee. Current TV has gone so far as to scrub its site of all postings referring to their captivity, and Laura Ling’s Current TV bio page makes no mention of the fact that she’s being held captive in North Korea. Current TV is doing this, of course, on the advice of our State Department, which would be the same State Department that has been so effective in resolving North Korea’s human rights atrocities, nuclear weapons program, threats to nuke Seoul and Tokyo, proliferation, and defiance of U.N. resolutions.

(Indeed, it’s striking how many of North Korea’s public statements since President Bush de-listed it as a sponsor of terrorism have themselves been arguable examples of international terrorism.)

So for now, Laura Ling and Euna Lee remain in a very lonely place. Their only vocal supporters are some Face Book groups that have sprung up and begun holding candle light vigils in California. Their cause will also be raised at a demonstration for human rights in North Korea that will take place this Saturday at the Chinese Embassy in Washington.

The effect of this episode, aside from re-legitimizing terrorism and the payment of ransom, will be an extension of the same distressing media cowardice that became apparent during the Mohammad Cartoons controversy: that all the talk we sometimes hear about the courage and independence of the news media is just that — talk. When faced with a challenge to their reporting of a legitimate news story that demands actual courage, the media kneels before terrorists and our government treats freedom of information like an encumbrance to its pursuit of bigger deals — or pursuing the goal of just being liked — that never quite manage to make us any safer.

Joshua Stanton is an attorney in Washington DC and formerly served as U.S. Army Judge Advocate in Korea.