Kick back with RFA staffers Amy Lee and Eugene Whong as they discuss Radio Free Asia’s latest stories and take you behind the scenes to show you how RFA journalists use their expertise and connections to deliver the news to our global audience.
Segments
- In The Rundown the Insider crew discuss and react to two or three of the zanier stories that RFA English published since the previous episode, and hopefully laughter and hijinx ensue.
- In How it’s Made we interview a guest, usually a journalist from one of the language services to go more in depth about a particular story they worked on, and also to go a bit behind the scenes to discuss the news reporting process and any challenges they may have faced in putting it together, as well as any further anecdotes they might have about how the story was made.
- What’s in a word is an occasional segment where, usually with a knowledgeable guest, the Insiders digest terminology and explain why certain terms are used at RFA and others are avoided. How one calls certain bodies of water, country names, and names of people can sometimes be either confusing or controversial.
About the Hosts
Amy is an Editing, Translation and Research Associate for RFA’s Research, Training and Evaluation team, which is to say that she works with translators, edits and occasionally writes things.
Amy is a Richmond, Virginia native who studied print journalism at Virginia Commonwealth University. During her undergraduate years, she covered Richmond City politics for the student news wire and wrote about Korean entertainment for Seoulbeats.
Amy left Richmond to live in a snow globe through the Japan Exchange Teaching Program, also known as JET, where she taught English in a rural town with one of the highest annual snowfalls in Japan. During her two-year stint, she served as Travel Editor for the JET Program’s nationwide magazine “CONNECT.” Amy moved to Washington, D.C. and continued working with the JET Program office before joining RFA in 2021.
Amy speaks English, Mandarin (Chinglish) and a little Korean. She enjoys watching true crime, bouldering, taking blurry photos on her film camera and tending to her plants.
Eugene is an English News Editor for RFA’s English Service who specializes in content about North Korea.
Born and raised in Silver Spring, Maryland, Eugene attended the University of Maryland, College Park, and like Amy, was also a teacher on the JET Program and is therefore her senpai by more than a decade.
After finishing a three-year stint in Japan, Eugene moved to South Korea, one of his many ancestral homelands (yes he’s of Korean descent even though he has a weird spelling of 황). He was supposed to be there for just two years for grad school at Yonsei University.
Eugene’s media career started when he became a guest on radio and TV shows for several Seoul-based outlets, most prominently at tbs eFM, a city-funded English-language radio station. His role at the station gradually increased, and he served as a writer for entertainment shows, then as a reporter and anchor for the news team. He also wrote feature articles for Yonhap News.
Eugene and several coworkers founded the Café Seoul Podcast, which he produced, and he served as a cohost for most of its run. Keen listeners might notice some similarities between Café Seoul and RFA Insider.
Eugene returned to the United States in the 11th year of his two-year plan. He moved to Washington, DC and began working at RFA in 2018.
Eugene speaks English mostly but he is also conversational in Japanese and Korean (just not at the same time), and he has almost completely forgotten high school Spanish.
Eugene is also a big nerd and is into old school tabletop roleplaying games, retro video games, Star Wars, Star Trek, Transformers G1 and many other geeky things. He is also a huge sports fan and follows the Baltimore Orioles and the NFL franchise in Washington, but he thinks that soccer is the best sport to see live.
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