East Asia

Kim Jong Un’s destruction of roads and rail links to South Korea this week illustrated the ongoing tensions on the Korean Peninsula. But as National Geographic Explorer Paul Salopek discovered while walking there, the demilitarized zone that has divided North from South for 71 years can be a quiet, peaceful stretch of land — and water. He shares his observations with Host Carolyn Beeler.

Jay Nikolewski knew from an early age where he wanted to live. Nikolewski never felt comfortable growing up in America and felt like he didn’t fit in. In high school, he decided Japan was the country for him. In 2023, he fulfilled that dream by moving to Japan and working toward a degree in Asian Studies at Temple University. The World’s Carolyn Beeler met with Jay Nikolewski in Tokyo and asked him why Japan.

In host Marco Werman’s latest conversation with National Geographic Explorer Paul Salopek, Salopek arrives at the shores of Incheon in South Korea. He explores an old fort there connected to the US invasion of South Korea in 1871 — a history largely unknown by many in the US and one that impacted the Korean Peninsula’s history for decades to follow.

National Geographic Explorer Paul Salopek’s walk through China led him to encounters with tea pickers and unique stays at tea plantations. His consumption of tea was already high following his walk through India, but in China, Salopek experienced tea like no other. Host Carolyn Beeler speaks with him about the history, culture, and traditions of tea in China.

In China’s southern province of Yunnan, a community known as the Bai expresses itself mostly by singing. And they have a song for everything: from history lessons to mourning to flirting. Host Marco Werman speaks with National Geographic Explorer Paul Salopek, who also discusses the early 20th century Austrian-American botanist and explorer Joseph Rock, who traveled through this same region of western China.