Writing
South Korea: Big-league problems for a chair-bound sport
SEOUL, South Korea — Koh Seok-hyun walks on stage wearing a red and white race-car uniform. He sits under glimmering orange lights, and contemplates the strategy he’s been preparing for weeks.
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
Jun 23, 2010
Vietnam in the aftermath of Ketsana
DANANG, Vietnam — “Attention passengers. This is your captain speaking. We’re starting our descent into Danang, with heavy winds and rain. Things could get bumpy. As always, we thank you for flying with us.”
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
May 30, 2010
Modern shamans all the rage in S Korea
SEOUL, South Korea — When I told my friends I would visit a Korean shaman, or mudang, their responses weren’t exactly reassuring. One Korean university student explained to me that evil spirits would hijack my body, prompting me to slit my wrists and drink my own blood until I became a minion of Satan. “Are you nuts? They’re evil!” another friend exclaimed.
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
May 30, 2010
Will Korean manhwa replace manga?
SEOUL, South Korea — In his bag, Park Jae Dong always carries a fine-point ink brush. The mellow, aging artist speaks in few words, preferring to communicate through Korean cartoons, or manhwa, which have gained such popularity across Asia in recent years.
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
May 30, 2010
Vietnam’s forgotten victims
DANANG, Vietnam — At 46, each year of misery seems to have etched new wrinkles around Tran Thanh Dung’s angry gaze. When he was child in the early 1970s, Tran says he witnessed U.S. soldiers shoot his parents — both of whom were communist Viet Cong soldiers during the Vietnam War. Bent on revenge, he joined the guerrilla group within hours.
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
May 30, 2010
Floating toilets to clean up Cambodia’s act
KAMPONG LUONG, Cambodia — Residents of this “floating village,” a spine of stilted shacks and huts crammed atop a tributary of the Mekong River, depend on the water below them for cooking, bathing and gathering fish for meals.
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
Apr 19, 2010
Nothing to Envy
Many Americans may remember peering at a famous satellite photograph of the two Koreas – prosperous South Korea lit up by cities and commerce, juxtaposed with the eerie black void of North Korea.
By Geoffrey Cain
The Christian Science Monitor
Feb 25, 2010
Choi Hyun-mi, teen boxing champ, spurs fellow North Korean defectors to keep fighting
Seoul, South Korea — For the thousands of North Korean defectors living in hardship around the world, champion boxer Choi Hyun-mi has become their Mohammad Ali.
By Geoffrey Cain
The Christian Science Monitor
Feb 17, 2010
Former prisoner of North Korea builds university for his former captors
Seoul, South Korea — On a Korean War battlefield in 1950, the young, patriotic Kim Chin-kyung, then just 15, lay limp on the ground, wounded by shrapnel. In the months leading up to that moment, nearly all of the 800 troops in his South Korean Army unit had been wiped out. He wasn’t sure if he would make it, either. So he struck a deal with his creator.
By Geoffrey Cain
The Christian Science Monitor
Feb 16, 2010
Agent of influence
Anh Nguyen Khanh, a motorbike driver in the mountains outside Da Nang, a city in southern Vietnam, is only fifty-three, but he looks much older. His fourteen-year-old son was born with severe spina bifida and cannot walk; his seventeen-year-old daughter has Downs syndrome.
By Geoffrey Cain
Washington Monthly
Jan 1, 2010