Legacy of the mind.

How We Work: The NPR Seoul Bureau

Inspired by a question from NPR listener/reader Emerline Ji, here’s a peek inside the workflow at the NPR Seoul office. 

Like all of the NPR international bureaus, the office staff consists of the bureau chief/correspondent (me) and a local staffer. Mine is Haeryun Kang, who translates written and spoken Korean, helps research and set up stories, pitches ideas and handles a lot of logistics due to my lack of language skills. During interviews in Korean, she has to do the interpersonal work of connecting with the subject, because I end up being the third wheel that speaks English. 

When not in the field, we work from my home office. That means my cat Caesar and Haeryun share a desk. He seems to get very territorial about the space. She works around him. Working from home also means I can breastfeed my infant whenever she is hungry (even though she almost always gets tangled up in my mess of cords). Feeding the baby on demand while I work is a privilege I wish more moms had, because as all nursing mommas know, pumping is tedious!

We don’t email because we use Slack. Slack is an excellent tool for distributed offices. Haeryun and I aren’t always in the same place, but we have the Slack app on our phones and desktops so we message each other constantly. Slack also allows easy uploading of files — documents, photos and audio are the media types we send most often — so our office lives virtually on the platform. Moreover, everything on Slack is searchable, so when I can’t remember a certain story idea we batted around, I just go to our #StoryIdea channel and scan it, or enter something like “demographic change” and everything we’ve ever discussed on the topic shows up in a nanosecond.

We usually have about three to four stories going at once. Some stories are quick turns, others can take awhile to get the right access, the best “scene” to help illustrate the idea, interviews, etc. So at any given time, I have a few stories going, at various stages. To keep track, Haeryun and I use a “Working Stories” Google Doc that both of us can edit at anytime with updates. We use the aforementioned #StoryIdea channel to bat around ideas and a separate Slack channel to update one another about our progress on working stories, i.e., “Who’s the best voice for the exam story?” Or, “I just got an interview about X.” Or, “Hey I’m running late I’ll see you in five minutes.” Slack (or a chat app like Kakao) is so frictionless for communication when compared to email.

I try to be in Japan at least once a month. Each time I’m in Tokyo, I try to stay in a different neighborhood, so that I can get more and more familiar with the giant megalopolis. In Japan, my fixer is Chie Kobayashi, who works for NPR as well as the BBC and CNN. 

When working from home all day, I try to leave home for lunch. I spend at least a third of my time traveling, so it’s nice to be home when I’m “home.” But even when I’m in Seoul I constantly try to go out for lunch with a friend or a source. I always learn something, and sharing a meal is my favorite way to bond with someone else.

The time difference with the U.S. means I work either very late or on-and-off throughout the day. Given the recent daylight saving change, I am now 14 (FOURTEEN!) hours ahead of NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C. My editor comes in early — at 6am ET — but that means it’s eight o’clock in the evening in Seoul when he comes into work. Chatting with Nishant (my editor) is my most consistent link to HQ, so I enjoy getting to catch up. If I have dinner plans and won’t be around, Nishant and I will schedule a call or edit in advance.

There is no typical day, but there are some regular practices. Work days really vary. We might spend an entire day out reporting, or an entire day in the office writing. Or it’s mixed up, in which part of the day is in the field, another part is phone calls, and some of it is writing. But each day, every international correspondent sends out an advisory to home base to say “Here’s what I’m working on, and here are the big headlines in my area of responsibility.” We also record “spots” regularly, which are 45-second reports on breaking news in our area for the top-of-the-hour NPR newscast. Each week, I take 90 minute Korean language class. I hate it because it’s so hard, but it is a constant.