Kim Jong Un

Actually, North Korea might not be guilty in the Sony hack

December 29, 2014

SEOUL, South Korea — The release of “The Interview” last week was supposed to spark a geopolitical imbroglio just in time for the holidays. Instead — after a last-minute release of the hastily canceled film to select theaters and crowds on the web — this Christmas turned out like any other, and we were allowed to watch Kim Jong Un’s head explode in peace.

By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World

Dec 29, 2014

Political kidnappings, North Korean style

December 26, 2014

SEOUL, South Korea — It’s difficult to imagine that kidnappers could get away with abducting a privileged foreign student from a French university and spiriting him thousands of miles away to his home country via a flight departing from a public airport.

By Geoffrey Cain
USA TODAY

Dec 26, 2014

GlobalPost boozes with Kim Jong-un

December 19, 2014

SEOUL, South Korea — Kim Jong-un admits he’s never met an American journalist, but that doesn’t stop our frigid winter evening from being a convivial one. We clink glasses, swig a soju shot, and plunk a few slabs of pork belly on the grill.

By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World

Dec 19, 2014

North Korea: How the least-wired country became a hacking superpower

December 7, 2014

SEOUL, South Korea — This year, North Korea has been flaunting its nuclear hardware in an effort to extort concessions from the United States and South Korea.

By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World

Dec 7, 2014

Even a bad-boy dictator needs friends

December 2, 2014

SEOUL, South Korea — Kim Jong Un has had a wild and crazy 2014. He rang in the New Year with rumors (later retracted) that his executed uncle had been “stripped naked, thrown into a cage, and eaten alive by a pack of ravenous dogs.”

By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World

Dec 2, 2014

North Korea is actually a surprisingly debauched place

November 26, 2014

SEOUL, South Korea — In North Korea, Americans caught committing mere peccadilloes — offenses that aren’t even crimes elsewhere — can expect little mercy from Kim Jong Un’s regime.

By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World

Nov 26, 2014

Jailed in North Korea: 5 Americans who got out

November 8, 2014

Editor’s note: This story was originally published in January. US officials announced today that Kenneth Bae has been released by North Korea and is returning home. You can read about his surprise release here.

By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World

Nov 8, 2014

Despite the recent gunfire, Korea’s DMZ is a surprisingly nice place

October 22, 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

Is Kim Jong Un’s powerful little sister running North Korea now?

October 6, 2014

SEOUL, South Korea — It’s been an unusually quiet quarter for North Korea, which has avoided the occasional exchange of bellicose bluster with the US and South Korea, and has not tested a much-prophesized fourth nuclear bomb.

By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World

Oct 6, 2014

Weaned on smuggled goods, North Korea’s new generation goes wild for Leonardo DiCaprio…

September 8, 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

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Geoffrey Cain In The Media

How China Perfected the Surveillance State

March 25, 2025

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.

Articles

Thanks to AI, Apple’s China problem is only getting worse

February 21, 2025

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.