Louisa Lim
Beijing Correspondent Louisa Lim is currently attending the University of Michigan as a Knight-Wallace Fellow. She will return to her regular role in 2014.
Based in Beijing, NPR foreign correspondent Louisa Lim finds China a hugely diverse, vibrant, fascinating place. "Everywhere you look and everyone you talk to has a fascinating story," she notes, adding that she's "spoiled with choices" of stories to cover. In her reports, Lim takes "NPR listeners to places they never knew existed. I want to give them an idea of how China is changing and what that might mean for them."
Lim opened NPR's Shanghai bureau in February 2006, but she's reported for NPR from up Tibetan glaciers and down the shaft of a Shaanxi coalmine. She made a very rare reporting trip to North Korea, covered illegal abortions in Guangxi province, and worked on the major multimedia series on religion in China "New Believers: A Religious Revolution in China." Lim has been part of NPR teams who multiple awards, including the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award, a Peabody and two Edward R. Murrow awards, for their coverage of the Sichuan earthquake in 2008 and the Beijing Olympics. She's been honored in the Human Rights Press Awards, as well as winning prizes for her multimedia work.
In 1995, Lim moved to Hong Kong and worked at the Eastern Express newspaper until its demise six months later and then for TVB Pearl, the local television station. Eventually Lim joined the BBC, working first for five years at the World Service in London, and then as a correspondent at the BBC in Beijing for almost three years.
Lim found her path into journalism after graduating with a degree in Modern Chinese studies from Leeds University in England. She worked as an editor, polisher, and translator at a state-run publishing company in China, a job that helped her strengthen her Chinese. Simultaneously, she began writing for a magazine and soon realized her talents fit perfectly with journalism.
NPR London correspondent Rob Gifford, who previously spent six years reporting from China for NPR, thinks that Lim is uniquely suited for his former post. "Not only does Louisa have a sharp journalistic brain," Gifford says, "but she sees stories from more than one angle, and can often open up a whole new understanding of an issue through her reporting. By listening to Louisa's reports, NPR listeners will certainly get a feel for what 21st century China is like. It is no longer a country of black and white, and the complexity is important, a complexity that you always feel in Louisa's intelligent, nuanced reporting."
Out of all of her reporting, Lim says she most enjoys covering stories that are quirky or slightly offbeat. However, she gravitates towards reporting on arts stories with a deeper significance. For example, early in her tenure at NPR, Lim highlighted a musical on stage in Seoul, South Korea, based on a North Korean prison camp. The play, and Lim's piece, highlighted the ignorance of many South Koreans of the suffering of their northern neighbors.
Married with a son and a daughter, Lim recommends any NPR listeners travelling to Shanghai stop by a branch of her husband's Yunnan restaurant, Southern Barbarian, where they can snack on deep fried bumblebees, a specialty from that part of southwest China. In Beijing, her husband owns and runs what she calls "the first and best fish and chip shop in China", Fish Nation.
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Defectors from North Korea now living in the South are celebrating the death of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. As the outside world tries to figure out how stable the country is, the defectors are focusing on trying to kickstart a revolution in North Korea. -
Kim Jong Un is playing a prominent role in his father's funeral and is already the object of fulsome praise from North Korea's official media. -
In the southern village of Wukan, residents have chased local authorities out of town and are in open rebellion over land seizures. Nearby villages also say their land has been taken. Nationwide, more than 40 million Chinese farmers have lost land. -
Many villagers have had property disputes with local officials. But the one in the southern village of Wukan has turned especially bitter. One man died in police custody, and residents have chased local authorities out of the village in Guangdong province. -
Amy Chua, the "Tiger Mother," caused a media sensation with her book about being a superstrict Chinese-American mom. But she looks positively laid-back next to her mainland Chinese equivalent, "Wolf Dad" Xiao Baiyao. He not only beat his kids, he boasts about how he did it. -
For more than half of the past 60 days, the air pollution in the Chinese capital has hit levels hazardous to human health. Experts estimate long-term exposure to such pollution could reduce life expectancy by as much as five years. NPR's Louisa Lim describes what it's like living in the city. -
A South Korean man meant for his Twitter profile picture, with its backdrop of a North Korean flag, to be a visual parody of North Korean news programs. Now, Park Jong-kun may be charged with violating a security law from 1948. Critics say it's being used to stifle free speech on North Korea. -
Lee Myung-bak was so poor as a child that he wore his school uniform every day because he had no other clothes. He became a student activist and helped Hyundai become the massive conglomerate it is today. In many ways, Lee's life story — and ultimate success — mirrors that of South Korea. -
In an exclusive interview with NPR, South Korea's President Lee Myung-bak speaks about opposition to a free trade agreement with the United States. Facing declining popularity, he also addresses criticism that his policy on North Korea is too hardline. -
In South Korea, opposition politicians have delayed the ratification of the Free Trade Agreement with the United States. The U.S. Congress has ratified the pact. But in South Korea, thousands of opponents have been holding angry street rallies, and a rising mood of anti-American sentiment is helping their cause.
