NORTH KOREA
My review in Washington Post of Dear Leader, a book that looks inside lives of the elite in Pyongyang and shows how China helps N. Korea catch high-value defectors.
Thanks to Google Maps, N. Korea’s prison camps are easy targets for snark. My piece in Foreign Policy.
A year after demise of Dear Leader, dictatorship in N. Korea rockets to new heights. My piece in the Washington Post.
My interview with NPR’s On The Media:
NKorea’s effort to market a more huggable image, with a smiling young dictator and his smartly dressed young wife.
North Korea’s Extreme Makeover
From Foreign Policy (7.26.2012): Twenty-something dictator and wife project a soft-focus People magazine image to world, as the border is locked down and the Gulag continues working political prisoners to death.
From LA Times(4.4.2012): In North Korea, children are bred like livestock in labor camps.
The Cruelty of Kim
From Foreign Policy (12.20.2012) : what it’s like to be a political prisoner in North Korea.
Many of Blaine’s Washington Post stories about North Korea can be found here.
INTERACTIVE MAP OF NORTH KOREA’S LABOR CAMPS
VIDEO: TRIP TO N. KOREA LEADS TO A LIFETIME OF REGRET
VIDEO: S. KOREANS CHALLENGE N. KOREAN DEFECTOR OVER LEAFLETS DAMNING KIM JONG IL