I trekked through Washington DC on a mission. The US government had released a commemorative coin showing Donald Trump and Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un face-to-face. Their respective flags were behind them and above them the words “peace talks” in Korean and English. It...

https://qz.com/1060318/samsung-verdict-the-possible-outcomes-for-south-korean-chaebol-heir-lee-jae-yong-in-his-bribery-trial/ THIS WEEK IN ASIA - David Josef Volodzko, March 3, 2018   We cannot use the full article on my page for copyright reasons. Need to use...

Victor Cha is experienced, informed — and no peacenik. None of that mattered for the Trump administration.   SEOUL and WASHINGTON — South Koreans are so accustomed to on-again, off-again nuclear tests and boisterous threats from North Korea that the regime...

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/business/article/2022102/why-samsungs-recall-galaxy-smartphones-threatens-its-universe THIS WEEK IN ASIA — Geoffrey Cain, September 26, 2016 As exploding batteries force recall of flagship phone, can a rising star rethink company’s...

At half-past-midnight on September 3, more than 100 police raided the home of Cambodia’s opposition leader, Kem Sokha. The security forces hustled him away to a maximum-security prison just outside of Phnom Penh. More than two months later, he’s languishing in a cell,...

https://qz.com/1060318/samsung-verdict-the-possible-outcomes-for-south-korean-chaebol-heir-lee-jae-yong-in-his-bribery-trial/ The Cambodia Daily - Ben Paviour, August 28, 2017   Geoffrey Cain denies allegations in Cambodian state-aligned media that he is a spy...

Business clans have dominated the country's economy for decades — but their time may finally be up.   "I was a god,” the scion proclaimed to me over dinner, reminiscing about the glory before his downfall. “Now I’m a man.” For decades, he’d been groomed as a...

IN FEBRUARY 1951, New York Times correspondent George Barrett, traveling with an American armored column, stumbled on the ghostly remains of a Korean hamlet that had been bombed out by US aircraft. “The inhabitants throughout the village and in the fields were caught...

The Korean version of this essay appeared in the Kyunghyang Shinmun on 12 February 2015. The English version here has been published with the permission of the newspaper and the author. I have lived in many countries, but the ajumma character seems rather unique to...

SEOUL, South Korea — For many North Korean defectors, the escape to freedom in the South is, sadly, the start of another lifelong struggle. Since the 1990s, thousands of refugees have crossed the river into China, staking out invisible lives as farmers and...