Writing
South Korean election: Vice and vanity in Seoul
SEOUL, South Korea — South Koreans assumed that Lee Kun-hee was the equivalent of royalty, an untouchable oligarch at the helm of one of the world’s largest companies, the Samsung Group. So the shock came right after South Korea’s pro-business president, Lee Myung-bak...
The Dictator’s Daughter
The heir of a controversial South Korean autocrat is now the country's first female president. Can she emerge from his shadow? In mid-November, a prominent South Korean wood-cut artist displayed a painting depicting conservative presidential candidate Park...
South Korean election: What’s Kim Jong-un thinking?
SEOUL, South Korea — It is an event that still shapes how North Korea approaches the outside world, one that will play into Kim Jong-un’s thinking when, on Wednesday, South Koreans vote for their next president. In June 2000, the South Korean president, Kim Dae-jung,...
The End of the Vietnamese Miracle
So much for the next Asian success story. HO CHI MINH CITY – In what was once one of Asia’s most exciting emerging markets, Nguyen Van Nguyen sees only gloom ahead. Since 2008, his business in southern Vietnam’s economic capital has suffered through two...
Globalizing Censorship
In April 2011, a Vietnamese dissident explained to me why he gave up blogging critically about the government. "We have jobs, motorbikes, nice coffee shops, and big luxury buildings," he said, pointing to the then-recently opened Bitexco Financial Tower, Ho Chi Minh...
The Spy Who Came In from the Heat
How an idealistic spy in Asia challenged the American way of war, and what his tragedy teaches us about finding allies today. Hours after World War II officially ended on September 2, 1945, the Vietnamese nationalist leader Ho Chi Minh referenced an unlikely...
Analysis: Vietnam needs to cool it
HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam — Four years ago, the future looked bright for Vietnam. Investors and economists proclaimed that this emerging market of 86 million people would grow into an “Asian tiger,” the next country to reach middle-income status by attracting foreign...
Watching Titanic in Pyongyang
What the first systematic survey of North Korean refugees tells us about life inside the Hermit Kingdom, and about whether the regime might be ready to fall. Ever since the founding father of North Korea, Kim Il Sung, unexpectedly died of a heart attack in...
Misruling Cambodia
If schools are a reflection of society, then they show Cambodia to be a limp and defeated nation. On the first day of class, Cambodian children learn they must bribe their teachers to get good grades, a practice that continues for the 3% of them who make it to...
Reviving the Vietnam War’s fish sauce industry
PHAN THIET and PHU QUOC, Vietnam — In 1910, a little-known nationalist named Nguyen Sinh Cung taught elementary school in Phan Thiet, a coastal town in southeastern Vietnam. The school was combined with a fish sauce factory that educated workers in modern commercial...