Beijing, China
Hi—I'm The Wall Street Journal's China bureau chief, posted in Beijing since August 2019. I oversee a team of two dozen correspondents and researchers in Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taipei, Singapore, and New York with responsibility for the Chinese mainland and Taiwan. Prior to this, I was posted in Seoul, where I was the Journal's Korea bureau chief. There, I began research on a book published by Alfred A. Knopf, entitled KOREAN MESSIAH. It took me more than a decade to research and write, and explores the Christian upbringing of North Korean state founder, Kim Il Sung, who was raised on the outskirts of a city, Pyongyang, that was so thoroughly Christianized that it was known as "the Jerusalem of the East." In 1945, the onetime Sunday school teacher and son of a "Bible-woman" was catapulted to power in Soviet-backed North Korea. For the next half-century, he constructed the greatest personality cult in human history—one that was thoroughly steeped in the Christian influences he grew up with, and one that he eventually bequeathed to his son and then his grandson. It's a fascinating tale, and I hope you'll read it with interest. The book is available for pre-order wherever books are sold, including at the Penguin Random House website and at my website, www.koreanmessiah.com. I will be touring KOREAN MESSIAH in April 2026, starting in Boston and working my way, city by city, down to Washington. I’d love to see you -- and to hear what you think. Further down the line, I also hope to visit Toronto, Chicago, and Indiana; and the West Coast, from L.A. to Vancouver.
Technology, North Korea, Korean peninsula