I grew up in Britain but speak Chinese, Korean and bad French. I was a student at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and the Universtity of Cambridge.

In 2013, I joined Reuters as a graduate trainee in Seoul, where I spent five years covering North and South Korea. In 2015, I published my book, North Korea Confidential, about the North Korean black market, for which the Supreme Court of the DPRK dubbed me “a bum who wrote an ignominious jumble of stories”.

From 2017-2022 I ran the Reuters bureau in Vietnam, where I led a team of reporters covering Vietnam’s fast-growing economy, companies, Communist Party politics, and developments in the South China Sea. I also reported from Cambodia, Thailand and Laos and worked on the Southeast Asia editing desk.

In 2022 I returned to London, to become our European Cybersecurity Correspondent. My beat touches on digital espionage, crime, warfare and propaganda/disinformation. I do not cover surveys, market news, product launches or events.

Here is some of my recent and past work:

Cybersecurity & digital espionage

How Israel’s bulky pager fooled Hezbollah

An invisible detonator and wafer-thin plastic explosives turned batteries into bombs

Top US news app has Chinese roots and ‘writes fiction’ using AI

Last Christmas Eve, NewsBreak, a free app with roots in China that is the most downloaded news app in the United States, published an alarming piece about a small town shooting. It was headlined “Christmas Day Tragedy Strikes Bridgeton, New Jersey Amid Rising Gun Violence in Small Towns.”

Exclusive: North Korean hackers breached top Russian missile maker

A group of North Korean hackers secretly breached computer networks at a major Russian missile developer last year, according to technical evidence and analysis by security researchers.

Russian hackers lured diplomats in Ukraine with cheap BMW ad

Hackers suspected of working for Russia’s foreign intelligence agency targeted dozens of diplomats at embassies in Ukraine with a fake used car advert in a bid to break into their computers, according to a cybersecurity firm report published on Wednesday.

Exclusive: Chinese hackers attacked Kenyan government as debt strains grew

Chinese hackers targeted Kenya’s government in a widespread series of digital intrusions against key ministries and institutions, according to three sources, cybersecurity research reports and Reuters’ analysis.

Exclusive: Russian hackers targeted U.S. nuclear scientists

A Russian hacking team known as Cold River targeted three nuclear research laboratories in the United States this past summer, according to internet records reviewed by Reuters and five cyber security experts.

EXCLUSIVE Russian software disguised as American finds its way into U.S. Army, CDC apps

Thousands of smartphone applications in Apple and Google’s online stores contain computer code developed by a technology company, Pushwoosh, that presents itself as based in the United States, but is actually Russian, Reuters has found.

EXCLUSIVE U.S. targets Russia with tech to evade censorship of Ukraine news

The U.S. government has pushed new, increased funding into three technology companies since the start of the Ukraine conflict to help Russians sidestep censors and access Western media, according to five people familiar with the situation.

Exclusive: Russian hackers are linked to new Brexit leak website, Google says

A new website that published leaked emails from several leading proponents of Britain’s exit from the European Union is tied to Russian hackers, according to a Google cybersecurity official and the former head of UK foreign intelligence.

Exclusive: U.S. spy agency probes sabotage of satellite internet during Russian invasion, sources say

Western intelligence agencies are investigating a cyberattack by unidentified hackers that disrupted broadband satellite internet access in Ukraine coinciding with Russia’s invasion, according to three people with direct knowledge of the incident.

Exclusive: Ukraine prepares potential move of sensitive data to another country – official

The Ukrainian government is preparing for the potential need to move its data and servers abroad if Russia’s invading forces push deeper into the country, a senior cybersecurity official told Reuters on Wednesday.

Analysis: Russian ransomware attacks on Ukraine muted by leaks, insurance woes

Warnings that pro-Russian ransomware gangs would snarl networks in Ukraine and its allies have so far failed to materialise amid disarray among the criminal underworld often behind such attacks and fears insurers would not pay out.

North Korea

The fabulous story of North Korea’s fabric made of stone

A “miracle fibre” developed to clothe the people exposes the holes in state propaganda

In Kim Jong Un’s summer retreat, fun meets guns

North Korea’s leader uses a prime seaside resort for military tests. Here’s why.

The $50 device that symbolizes a shift in North Korea

A $50 portable media player is providing many North Koreans a window to the outside world despite the government’s efforts to keep its people isolated – a symbol of change in one of the world’s most repressed societies.

Exclusive: North Korea’s Unit 180, the cyber warfare cell that worries the West

North Korea’s main spy agency has a special cell called Unit 180 that is likely to have launched some of its most daring and successful cyber attacks, according to defectors, officials and internet security experts.

Behind Kim Jong Un’s ‘madness’

Donald Trump calls him Little Rocketman, but others discern an evolving strategy behind changes the North Korean leader has made since he came to power.

Paranoid: North Korea’s computer operating system mirrors its political one

North Korea’s homegrown computer operating system mirrors its political one, according to two German researchers who have delved into the code: a go-it-alone approach, a high degree of paranoia and invasive snooping on users.

Pyongyang Bling – The rise of North Korea’s consumer comrades

Nail salons, massage parlours, cafes and other signs of consumerism were unheard of in rigidly controlled North Korea just a few years ago, but they are slowly emerging in one of the world’s last bastions of Cold War socialism.

In North Korea, hackers are a handpicked, pampered elite

Despite its poverty and isolation, North Korea has poured resources into a sophisticated cyber-warfare cell called Bureau 121, defectors from the secretive state said as Pyongyang came under the microscope for a crippling hack into computers at Sony Pictures Entertainment.

Vietnam

How Vietnam’s ‘influencer’ army wages information warfare on Facebook

In Vietnam, where the state is fighting a fierce online battle against political dissent, social media “influencers” are more likely to be soldiers than celebrities.

Exclusive: Facebook unblocks ‘#saltbae’ after Vietnamese minister’s golden steak

Facebook’s parent company said on Tuesday it had unblocked the hashtag for celebrity chef Nusret Gokce’s nickname ‘#saltbae’, having found the tag had been blocked globally days after a video was posted online of Gokce feeding a gold-encrusted steak to a senior Vietnamese Communist Party official in…

Facebook tracks ‘OceanLotus’ hackers to IT firm in Vietnam

Cybersecurity investigators at Facebook have traced a hacking group long suspected of spying on behalf of the Vietnamese government to an IT company in Ho Chi Minh City.

Exclusive: Facebook agreed to censor posts after Vietnam slowed traffic – sources

Facebook’s local servers in Vietnam were taken offline early this year, slowing local traffic to a crawl until it agreed to significantly increase the censorship of “anti-state” posts for local users, two sources at the company told Reuters on Tuesday.

Exclusive: Vietnam threatens to shut down Facebook over censorship requests – source

Vietnam has threatened to shut down Facebook in the country if it does not bow to government pressure to censor more local political content on its platform, a senior official at the U.S. social media giant told Reuters.

‘Hot news from the Super League!’: How Vietnam skirts Party speculation ban on social media

Vietnamese are trading fake weather reports and football scores on social media as a creative means to discuss Communist Party leadership wrangling after an official ban on speculation ahead of the Party’s biggest and most important meeting in five years.

Lovers, comrades! Forbidden love in North Korea finds a way in Vietnam

A young couple with matching expressions stare nervously into the camera with deep brown eyes. He, a Vietnamese student, has just met the love of his life. She, a North Korean, is forbidden to love him back.