Anna Fifield

Anna Fifield (born 14 March 1976) is currently the Beijing bureau chief for The Washington Post.^[1] She was Tokyo bureau chief (also for The Washington Post) from 2014-2018, where she focused her attention on news and issues of Japan, North Korea, and South Korea. She has been to North Korea a dozen times.

She got her start writing for the Rotorua Daily Post ^[2] in her native New Zealand and freelancing for wire services. Then, in 2001 at the age of 24, she headed to London and secured a job at the Financial Times where she worked for 13 years, mainly as a foreign correspondent. She was US Political Correspondent in Washington DC between 2009 and 2013, Middle East correspondent in Beirut and Tehran, and Korea Correspondent in Seoul.

She has reported from more than 20 countries, including Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya and North Korea. She was a Nieman Fellow in Journalism (August 2013 through May 2014) at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.^[3] There, she studied how change happens in closed societies.^[4]

She covered the story of deceased University of Virginia student Otto Warmbier, who was released from imprisonment in North Korea through diplomatic efforts by the Department of State in the Trump Administration.

Through her reporting, she has highlighted the difficulties faced by ordinary North Koreans, especially in the Kim Jong-un era. In 2017, she interviewed more than 25 recent escapees from North Korea, producing a major report that was published in both English and Korean. This was the first time the Washington Post had published in the Korean language.

She also secured the only interview with Kim Jong-un's aunt, who has been living in the United States since 1998. Her work continues to provide people around the world with insight to life on the Korean peninsula--she went live on Facebook from North Korea^[5] in 2016.

Education

• 2013–2014 – Harvard University, Fellow, Nieman Foundation for Journalism
• 1997 – University of Canterbury, Post-graduate Diploma, Journalism
• 1994–1996 – Victoria University of Wellington, Bachelor of Arts, English language and literature

Select publications

• Fifield, Anna. Life under Kim Jong Un Washington Post, 17 November 2017
• Fifield, Anna. Kim Jong Un wants to stay in power — and that is an argument against nuclear war Washington Post, 10 August 2017
• Fifield, Anna. China and US agree non-binding climate plan – Financial Times, 10 July 2013.
• Fifield, Anna, Japan's Leader Stops Short of WWII Apology, Washington Post, 14 August 2015. (with 1:45 embedded video)
• Anna Fifield, S. Koreans Make Big Sacrifices to Study Overseas, (paper presented at the annual meeting for the Association for Asian Studies, ... 1996); Chang-sik Shin and Ian Shaw, “Social Policy in South Korea: Cultural and Structural Factors in the Emergence of Welfare" First published: 23 June 2003. DOI: 10.1111/1467-9515.00343

-Reprinted in: Los Angeles Times, 16 January 2006, Josh C. H. Lin (El Monte, CA: Pacific Asian Press, 1998), 95–112. in Encyclopedia of Asian American Issues Today, Volume 1, by Edith Wen-Chu Chen.

-Reprinted in: Encyclopedia of Asian American Issues Today, co-edited by Edith Wen-Chu Chen and Grace J. Yoo, 2010. Social Science.

References

External links

• Washington Post profile for Anna Fifield
• The Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan profile for Anna Fifield
• PSCP TV video broadcasts from Anna Fifield
• Washington Post reporter goes live on Facebook from North Korea