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Author, "Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea"
Former Beijing bureau chief with the Los Angeles Times and Press Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations; author of Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea
PROFILE
Barbara Demick
Guest
FROM Barbara Demick
Press Play with Madeleine Brand
What's next for US relations with Turkey and North Korea? Early Tuesday morning, North Korea tested another intercontinental ballistic missile. It blew up shortly after take-off. But North Korea keeps working on a nuclear missile that could reach the U.S. Also, in Turkey, a close vote has given sweeping new powers to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Turkey is an important Western ally in the region, but its leader is becoming increasingly authoritarian.
Press Play with Madeleine Brand
Tibet at a Crossroads Today is the Dalai Lama’s 80th birthday - in this lifetime. The spiritual leader of Tibet is in Anaheim as part of a three day visit to the Global Compassion Summit. Journalist Barbara Demick explored the topic of Tibet at a crossroads in the Los Angeles Times on Sunday. Tibetans are spiritually tied to the exiled leader - but are anxious about the future with an ascendant China.
To the Point
Chinese Dissident Leaves Embassy The US says China guaranteed humane treatment for the blind dissident Chen Guangcheng, and he was released from diplomatic refuge to a hospital in Beijing. But activists are telling overseas human rights groups a different story. Barbara Demick is Beijing correspondent for the Los Angeles Times .
To the Point
A Glimpse at North Korea: The Hermit Kingdom North Korea is the world's most militarized nation and one of the poorest; the government does whatever it can to prevent information from seeping across the borders. In the 1990's, famine killed between one and two million people, and the economy continues to struggle under US and UN sanctions due to the country's pursuit of nuclear weapons. So there's a bit of a change. A tiny crack has been opened to tourists in the hope that investors might see opportunity, but it's tourism of a very limited kind. We hear about the first visit, how defectors describe what life is really like and what the current prospects might be for reunification with South Korea.
Which Way, L.A.?
Is China Really a Melting Pot? Last week, Prime Minister Hu Jintao rushed home from the G-8 summit to deal with massive unrest and deadly violence in what's called the Shin-jung Uighur Autonomous Region in China's far west. For the first time, the government announced that paramilitary police opened fire, killing two Uighurs and injuring a third.
To the Point
Is China Really a Melting Pot? Last week, Prime Minister Hu Jintao rushed home from the G-8 summit to deal with massive unrest and deadly violence in what's called the Shin-jung Uighur Autonomous Region in China's far west. For the first time, the government announced that paramilitary police opened fire, killing two Uighurs and injuring a third. That violence has been followed up by a security crackdown, a scenario much like that in Tibet before the Olympics. Muslim Uighurs once were the majority in a province the size of Texas. Now they're being squeezed by a government-sponsored migration of Han Chinese. But Tibetans and Uighurs are by no means alone among 56 ethnic groups whose cultural and linguistic differences are exaggerated by economic inequality. As the government prepares to celebrate what it calls 60 years of “harmony,” we hear about potential threats to central authority.
To the Point
Secretary of State Clinton Makes Her First Trip to China Hillary Clinton's first trip as Secretary of State took her to China , where the government is comfortable with Republicans. Instead of making demands about human rights and currency manipulation, she urged Beijing to continue buying American bonds. Worries about the world economy shared the agenda with global warming, energy and national security, including North Korea's nuclear weapons. Clinton told the Chinese, “We are truly going to rise and fall together.” We get several assessments of her visit and what lies ahead.
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To the Point
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To the Point
Human Rights in the era of Donald Trump President Trump’s UN Ambassador, Nikki Haley, said today the US might pull out of the United Nations’ Human Rights Council. Serious violators of human rights are members of the Council itself–and a US resignation could make things worse. Later on today’s show, now that he’s into his second term, comedian turned US Senator Al Franken is telling jokes again.
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