Years before basketball diplomat and former Dallas resident Dennis Rodman went to North Korea, NPR foreign correspondent Louisa Lim was already there and giving listeners a look at life inside "one of the least-visited countries on earth."
That was a severely state-controlled visit in 2009. Now the veteran broadcaster is focused on secrets kept by one of the world's more increasingly open nations, China. Based in Beijing, she has reported on current events throughout the region and also won praise for her stories on the rebirth of popular religion, stifled during Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution.
In her latest undertaking, Lim examined a significant event -- only a quarter of a century ago -- in Chinese history and the result is her latest book, The People’s Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited. Details of that June 4, 1989, event, when unarmed protesters were overwhelmed by the People's Army in Tiananmen Square, have long been buried by official China. But author Lim reveals the personal nature of the legacy of Tiananmen by telling the stories of eight people whose lives were reshaped by the protests and the response.
Lim, whose career in journalism includes opening NPR's Shanghai bureau in 2006, was part of NPR teams that won the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award, a Peabody Award and two Edward R. Murrow awards for coverage of 2008 events, the Sichuan earthquake and Beijing Olympics. She has also received a Hong Kong Human Rights Press Award.