Writing
Watching Titanic in Pyongyang
What the first systematic survey of North Korean refugees tells us about life inside the Hermit Kingdom, and about whether the regime might be ready to fall.
By Geoffrey Cain
Washington Monthly
Jul 1, 2011
Misruling Cambodia
If schools are a reflection of society, then they show Cambodia to be a limp and defeated nation. On the first day of class, Cambodian children learn they must bribe their teachers to get good grades, a practice that continues for the 3% of them who make it to college.
By Geoffrey Cain
The Wall Street Journal
May 19, 2011
Reviving the Vietnam War’s fish sauce industry
PHAN THIET and PHU QUOC, Vietnam — In 1910, a little-known nationalist named Nguyen Sinh Cung taught elementary school in Phan Thiet, a coastal town in southeastern Vietnam.
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
Mar 26, 2011
Can Vietnam breed innovators?
HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam —Vo Van Toi’s high-tech laboratory clashes against its impoverished surroundings. Outside, cattle roam swampy fields and squatters sell sugarcane from wooden huts. Inside, he shows off his near-infrared spectroscopy machine, which measures oxygen content in blood, and a CT scanner.
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
Mar 1, 2011
Vietnam: In the Year of the Cat, Tet brings less fanfare
HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam — On the surface, it seems like any other holiday. Revelers will bedeck their homes and cities with apricot blossoms, and will wedge opulent flower mosaics through the central streets of Ho Chi Minh City. Migrant workers will visit their families in the countryside, causing parts of cities to empty out.
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
Jan 31, 2011
This might be the destination wedding site to end all destination wedding sites
SEOUL, South Korea — The ironically named de-militarized zone (DMZ) is a 160-mile long buffer of landmines, guard posts, and barbed wire between North and South Korea. It is a potent symbol of division and suffering for citizens on both sides of the peninsula.
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
Jan 1, 2011
South Korea is setting a bad example for North Korea
SEOUL, South Korea — The democratic half of the Korean peninsula is having an increasingly hard time with the whole freedom of speech thing.
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
Jan 1, 2011
North Korea’s new drug addiction
SEOUL, South Korea — For years, crystal meth has been the intoxicant of choice for North Korean drug users. They take the stimulant recreationally, or occasionally to work long hours or suppress unsatisfied appetites in the impoverished countryside.
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
Jan 1, 2011
Mao’s Great Famine
In the late 1950s, thousands of Chinese farmers starved to death while toiling on massive irrigation projects, under orders to meet Mao Zedong’s outlandish expectations for growth. Most laborers didn’t speak up because they feared the authorities would label them rightists.
By Geoffrey Cain
The Christian Science Monitor
Nov 2, 2010
The comic books that brainwash North Koreans
SEOUL, South Korea — Heinz Insu Fenkl, a literature professor at the State University of New York (SUNY) at New Paltz, has cracked one secret to understanding the bizarre regime of North Korea: by reading its comic books.
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
Oct 25, 2010