About James Card
As an American freelance writer living in South Korea, James has traveled over all over the country hunting down stories. He has tracked the crimes of Korea's worst serial killer, visited the country's last leper colony, and interviewed a U.S. military team that recovers the remains of soldiers missing in action. For a Korean daily, he wrote about what it was like to survive on an uninhabited desert island off the Korean coast. Last winter he gained access to a remote part of the DMZ and reported on the ecological and political issues surrounding this militarized strip of land.
About environmental issues, he sailed on the Greenpeace ship the Rainbow Warrior to cover a whaling protest. He has reported on Korean dioxin levels and wind power developments; diminishing salmon migrations in the Sea of Japan, the construction of the world's largest sea wall on Korea's western coast, and the massive oil spill on the Taean peninsula. He's written about bowhunting whitetail deer for population control in an abandoned ammunition plant in Wisconsin and about shotgunning nuisance crows in urban Singapore.
On the political and cultural front, he's reported on the streets at the APEC summit in Busan, analyzed Korea's failed Winter Olympic bids, and wrote about North Korea's nuclear ascendancy. He has dissected the passive-aggressive relations between Japan and South Korea, and has written about killer robots on the DMZ, Korea's space tourist program, cyber diplomat spammers and Seoul's lost opportunity to create a desperately needed central park on a soon-to-be vacated US military base. He has written often on Korea's multi-billion dollar yet dysfunctional English education system.
He has also reviewed books by authors that range from Daewoo's former CEO to Jack London to an American defector in Pyeongyang. James has only written one video review. It was about unearthing an obscure gore film from North Korea that showcased caged animal fights. He also reviewed one of the hardest to find beers in the world, Taedong River, which is brewed in North Korea.
His work has appeared in Foreign Policy, Monocle, National Geographic News, Salon, the Christian Science Monitor, Wired News, the Guardian Weekly, ESPN, the Asia Sentinel, Asia Times,and other publications.
He originally hails from Wisconsin and he graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Platteville with a bachelor's of arts in 1995.