What, if anything, should we do about TikTok? Is the forced sale of the fastest-growing social media platform in the world a commonsense step to protect America from the influence of the Chinese Communist Party? Or is legislation that would mandate the app’s sale or ban a threat to free speech?
SEOUL, South Korea — For North Korea watchers, the news is mysterious and the motives unknown. On October 26, an 85-year-old Korean War veteran from Palo Alto, California, became the second American detained in the past year in the world’s most reclusive state.
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
Nov 21, 2013
SEOUL, South Korea — In American and South Korean tabloids, the wife of the North Korean dictator has achieved an unusual degree of celebrity.
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
Oct 30, 2013
SEOUL, South Korea — When North and South Korea hold talks in Seoul on Wednesday and Thursday, top of the agenda is whether to reopen the suspended Kaesong Industrial Complex.
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
Jun 11, 2013
SEOUL, South Korea — I’m now reading an advance copy of Andrei Lankov’s upcoming book, “The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia,” due out from Oxford University Press on May 8.
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
Apr 24, 2013
SEOUL, South Korea — Well, we don’t really know the answer. Last time there was a Korean War from 1950 to 1953, some historians say it nearly did go nuclear — although there’s disagreement over the extent President Harry Truman was willing to consider the Bomb based on vague public statements.
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
Apr 11, 2013
SEOUL, South Korea — From both sides of the Korean Peninsula, South Korea’s first female president, Park Geun-hye, has gotten a baptism by fire since she took office on Feb. 25.
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
Mar 16, 2013
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.
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
Dec 18, 2012
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.