Editor’s note: This story was originally published on Jan. 7, 2014. Please scroll to the end of this article for a response that South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent GlobalPost on Jan. 9. 2014. GlobalPost stands by the piece in its entirety.
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
Dec 9, 2014
KYOTO, Japan — Natsuki Ohshima, 24, has found a gem. Straight out of college, he has scored a professional job as a corporate recruiter. His generation, born in the 1980s, has grown up in the midst of economic stagnation lasting two decades. So even he admits that landing a corporate job at such a young age is unusual.
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
Jul 12, 2013
SEOUL, South Korea – More bluster today: the wire services are reporting that North Korea, for now, isn’t allowing South Korean businesspeople to enter the Kaesong industrial zone. That’s the special administrative area north of the border where several hundred South Korean managers supervise some 50,000 North Korean laborers, who make garments and handbags.
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
Apr 3, 2013
HO CHI MINH CITY – In what was once one of Asia’s most exciting emerging markets, Nguyen Van Nguyen sees only gloom ahead. Since 2008, his business in southern Vietnam’s economic capital has suffered through two volatile bouts of inflation, peaking in August 2011 at 23 percent — at the time, Asia’s highest inflation rate.
By Geoffrey Cain
Foreign Policy
Jul 11, 2012
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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.