About 20% of the National Samsung Electronics Union walked off the job, protesting for higher pay and better working conditions. It’s the first time Samsung workers have gone on strike. The World’s host Carolyn Beeler talks about the strike and its significance with Geoffrey Cain.
SEOUL, South Korea — In 2009, American minister Robert Park crossed into North Korea to protest what he called a “genocide” in the country’s six prison camps. Of course, the regime detained and later released him, making him one of six Americans held in North Korea in recent years.
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
Oct 16, 2013
SEOUL, South Korea — This week, it’s not North Korea or Zimbabwe resisting a call for justice from the United Nations. Rather, it is East Asia’s wealthiest and oldest democracy: Japan.
By Geoffrey Cain
Anchorage Daily News
Jun 21, 2013
GWANGJU, South Korea — It is a chilly day in Gwangju, the cradle of South Korea’s political left, and home to what was once a boisterous democracy movement that fought military rule in the 1970s and 1980s.
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
Feb 25, 2013
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Beat down by the sweltering Cambodian sun, a group of teenagers took a rest from peddling pirated books and newspapers to tourists. One merchant switched on his mobile phone, playing the usual hit “Gangnam Style.”
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
Jan 14, 2013
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 City’s tallest edifice, with a helicopter landing pad jutting out of its side. “The Communist Party has made this blogging unprofitable. If we go up against them, how do we get a piece of that prosperity?”
By Geoffrey Cain
CARNEGIE COUNCIL for Ethics in International Affairs
Jun 28, 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.