SEOUL, South Korea — When I told my friends I would visit a Korean shaman, or mudang, their responses weren’t exactly reassuring. One Korean university student explained to me that evil spirits would hijack my body, prompting me to slit my wrists and drink my own blood until I became a minion of Satan. “Are you nuts? They’re evil!” another friend exclaimed.

By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World

May 30, 2010

SEOUL, South Korea — In his bag, Park Jae Dong always carries a fine-point ink brush. The mellow, aging artist speaks in few words, preferring to communicate through Korean cartoons, or manhwa, which have gained such popularity across Asia in recent years.

By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World

May 30, 2010

DANANG, Vietnam — At 46, each year of misery seems to have etched new wrinkles around Tran Thanh Dung’s angry gaze. When he was child in the early 1970s, Tran says he witnessed U.S. soldiers shoot his parents — both of whom were communist Viet Cong soldiers during the Vietnam War. Bent on revenge, he joined the guerrilla group within hours.

By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World

May 30, 2010

Many Americans may remember peering at a famous satellite photograph of the two Koreas – prosperous South Korea lit up by cities and commerce, juxtaposed with the eerie black void of North Korea.

By Geoffrey Cain
The Christian Science Monitor

Feb 25, 2010

Seoul, South Korea — For the thousands of North Korean defectors living in hardship around the world, champion boxer Choi Hyun-mi has become their Mohammad Ali.

By Geoffrey Cain
The Christian Science Monitor

Feb 17, 2010

Just before the communist Khmer Rouge marched into the capital in 1975, Tea Lim Koun, the director of the classic Cambodian film “The Snake Man” (1972), escaped bloodshed by fleeing to Canada. Over the next four years, the genocidal regime executed most of Phnom Penh’s remaining directors and actors, wiping out Cambodia’s vibrant filmmaking scene.

By Geoffrey Cain
The Christian Science Monitor

Dec 16, 2009