Bertil Lintner

Bertil Lintner (born 1953) is a Swedish journalist, author and strategic consultant who has been writing about Asia for nearly four decade was formerly the Burma correspondent of the now defunct Far Eastern Economic Review and currently works as a correspondent for Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet and Denmark’s Politiken. He has written extensively about Burma, India (especially the North East), China and North Korea in various local, national and international publications of over thirty countries. He is considered to be the first journalist to reveal the growing relationship between Burma and North Korea on strategic cooperation. He mainly writes about organized crime, ethnic and political insurgencies, and regional security. He has published several books including, “Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma's Struggle for Democracy”, “Blood Brothers: The Criminal Underworld of Asia” and “Great Leader, Dear Leader: Demystifying North Korea Under The Kim Clan” (see http://www.asiapacificms.com/books/). He is a regular contributor to YaleGlobal Online, the Wall Street Journal and Asia Times Online. Lintner lives in Chiang Mai, Thailand with his wife Hseng Noung, an ethnic Shan from Burma. They have a daughter who was born in Kohima, India, during their epic 18-month, 2,275-kilometer overland journey from northeastern India across Burma’s northern rebel-held areas to China in 1985-87. They travelled by foot, jeep, bicycle, and elephant, becoming the first outsiders in over four decades to cross the isolated area, then controlled by various ethnic insurgents. This culminated in his first book, “Land of Jade: A Journey from India through Northern Burma to China.” In 2004, Lintner received an award for excellence in reporting about North Korea from the Society of Publishers in Asia. He was also the president of the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand (FCCT) from 1993-95.