SEOUL, South Korea — Perched above the shimmering cityscape, in an old stone house with a makeshift aluminum roof, is an elderly shaman who goes by the spiritual name “Lotus Prophet.”
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
Nov 6, 2014
CHEORWON, South Korea — Bill Clinton called the heavily armed demilitarized zone here “the scariest place on Earth.” It is at this border between North and South that the legacy of the 1950 to 1953 Korean War — which never resulted in a peace treaty — remains tense. It’s the tangible remnant of a “forgotten war” in which more than 2 million civilians died.
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
Oct 22, 2014
SEOUL, South Korea — “Before, my mission was to rat out communists in the temple,” explained Chung Han-yeong, who is not your typical Buddhist monk.
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
Oct 13, 2014
INCHEON, South Korea — Standing in front of a cluttered, rowdy classroom of about a hundred adolescents, North Korean defector Kim Su-ryeon, 25, kicks off her presentation with a pop quiz.
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
Sep 24, 2014
SEOUL, South Korea — “So you think you can discuss military issues without even having served?” Conservative lawmaker Han Gi-ho hurled that question at conscientious objector Lim Tae-hoon in a parliamentary hearing. “You didn’t even go!”
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
Sep 22, 2014
SEOUL, South Korea — “It’s not fair!” complained a South Korean sex industry aficionado, a former “consultant” for a large call girl website. “The tax men are hurting business! Cracking down on company cards!”
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
Sep 16, 2014
UIJEONGBU, South Korea — Growing up in hardship in this once-poor Cold War outpost, the young Kim Kyeong-sun decades ago met a job recruiter who promised her housing and a paycheck to support her family.
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
Sep 11, 2014
SEOUL, South Korea — By North Korean standards, Yeonmi Park, 20, grew up in affluence, the daughter of a party loyalist who traded in gold and silver with Chinese customers.
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
Sep 8, 2014
SEOUL, South Korea — Every year an untold number of dogs, raised in cramped and inhumane commercial breeding grounds known as “puppy mills,” make their way from South Korea and elsewhere into your local kennel for re-sale at premium prices, a GlobalPost investigation revealed in June.
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
Sep 2, 2014
SEOUL, South Korea — It’ll smack you in the face the instant you walk into any decent Korean restaurant: the pungent smell of kimchi — the piquant pickled cabbage whose bold tanginess is increasingly exalted by Western foodies.
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
Aug 18, 2014
What to read next:
Geoffrey Cain on Investigative Journalism, Authoritarian Power, and The Perfect Police State | In a wide-ranging conversation with Jennifer Grossman, CEO of The Atlas Society, investigative journalist Geoffrey Cain reflects on years spent reporting inside some of the world’s most restrictive regimes — and on the research behind his book The Perfect Police State: An Undercover Odyssey into China’s Terrifying Surveillance Dystopia of the Future.
For years, Tim Cook insisted Apple could change China from the inside. Instead, China changed Apple.
The latest evidence? Apple spent billions developing cutting-edge electric vehicle battery technology with Chinese automaker BYD, only to watch its innovations become the cornerstone of BYD’s rise to global electric vehicle dominance. Apple walked away with nothing. China walked away with everything.
This isn’t just another story about corporate research and development gone wrong. It’s a cautionary tale about how even America’s most valuable company has become trapped in China’s web of technological control — and how that web is about to tighten even further.