SEOUL, South Korea — “So you think you can discuss military issues without even having served?” Conservative lawmaker Han Gi-ho hurled that question at conscientious objector Lim Tae-hoon in a parliamentary hearing. “You didn’t even go!”
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
Sep 22, 2014
SEOUL, South Korea — “It’s not fair!” complained a South Korean sex industry aficionado, a former “consultant” for a large call girl website. “The tax men are hurting business! Cracking down on company cards!”
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
Sep 16, 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
SEOUL, South Korea — Every year an untold number of dogs, raised in cramped and inhumane commercial breeding grounds known as “puppy mills,” make their way from South Korea and elsewhere into your local kennel for re-sale at premium prices, a GlobalPost investigation revealed in June.
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
Sep 2, 2014
SEOUL, South Korea — For more than a year, the world has watched the bold economic experiment known as Abenomics, once exalted as the saving grace for two decades of economic torpor in Japan.
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
Aug 22, 2014
SEOUL, South Korea — It’ll smack you in the face the instant you walk into any decent Korean restaurant: the pungent smell of kimchi — the piquant pickled cabbage whose bold tanginess is increasingly exalted by Western foodies.
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
Aug 18, 2014
SEOUL, South Korea — North and South Korea have been divided for more than six decades, but on Monday Pope Francis moved his followers with a final prayer during Mass: It’s time to find a path to peace on the Korean peninsula, and to reject the “mindset of confrontation and suspicion” that plagues both sides.
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
Aug 18, 2014
SEOUL, South Korea — The muscular and imposing Antonio Inoki stands among Japan’s most revered former wrestlers, a WWE hall of famer who has settled into retirement as a member of the Japanese parliament.
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
Aug 12, 2014
SEOUL, South Korea — Menacing battalions of police, wearing neon yellow uniforms and carrying anti-riot shields, regularly march through the South Korean capital, at times showing up en masse to small and harmless protests.
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
Aug 5, 2014
SEOUL, South Korea — The citizens of this hyper-competitive East Asian nation are the most cosmetically enhanced people in the world, going under the knife more per capita than Americans, Italians, Greeks and Brazilians.
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
Jul 27, 2014
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.