North Korea

Council on Foreign Relations: There’s A Cop In My Pocket: Policymakers Need to Stop Advocating Surveillance by Default.

August 28, 2023

Encryption is like a baby: It comes with problems, but you wouldn’t solve them with blunt force. There is no safe form of “end-to-half” encryption, no backdoor that serves government authorities without also serving criminals. Yet under the banner of foreign relations, lawmakers continue to advance policies that normalize surveillance by default. These measures turn personal devices into monitoring tools, weakening security for everyone while claiming to strengthen it. Once encryption is compromised, hackers and hostile states gain the same access as police. The result is a quiet dismantling of privacy, civil liberties, and the open internet itself.

Nikkei Asia: Wagner uprising unnerves Russia’s partners across Asia

June 26, 2023

Some leaders left to parse how to prevent challenges to their own power By Steven BorowiecNikkei AsiaJune 26, 2023 SEOUL — This weekend, as

Asia Experts Forum Geoffrey Cain on “Samsung Rising”

February 22, 2022

22 February 2022 Geoffrey Cain is an award-winning foreign correspondent, author, technologist, and scholar of East and Central Asia. His first book, Samsung Rising: The

‘The Great Successor’ Review: Pyongyang Confidential

March 9, 2020

In Kim Jong Un’s North Korea everyone seems to live in fear, even as living standards rise slightly thanks to minorreforms.

By Geoffrey Cain
The Wall Street Journal

Jun 11, 2019

North Korea Is Not Vietnam

March 9, 2020

Expecting the brutally repressive state to liberalize magically the way Vietnam did is a pipe dream.

By Geoffrey Cain
The New Republic

Feb 28, 2019

New coins, no change

May 29, 2018

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.

By Geoffrey Cain
Mekong Review

May 29, 2018

The Korea Hawk Who Wasn’t Hawkish Enough

February 2, 2018

Victor Cha is experienced, informed – and no peacenik. None of that mattered for the Trump administration.

By Geoffrey Cain
Foreign Policy

Feb 2, 2018

The rail North Korea: An eye-opening train journey through the secretive state

May 12, 2016

It was refreshing not to be in the constrained confines of Pyongyang, but in a more natural environment watching people go about their daily routine unhindered. However, the narrative is never as linear as it seems. It helped that we were travelling with Geoffrey Cain, a former journalist and author, now studying for a doctorate in Korean Studies

By Monisha Rajesh
The Telegraph

May 12, 2016

Scorched Earth Doctrine

May 11, 2015

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.

By Geoffrey Cain
Los Angeles Review of Books

May 11, 2015

This North Korean is getting rich off capitalism

March 26, 2015

SEOUL, South Korea — For many North Korean defectors, the escape to freedom in the South is, sadly, the start of another lifelong struggle.

By Geoffrey Cain
USA TODAY

Mar 26, 2015

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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.