Bertil Lintner is a Swedishjournalist, author and strategic consultant who has been writing about Asia for nearly four decades. He 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.
Life and work
Bertil Lintner has written extensively about Myanmar, India, 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, World.Wide.Web: Chinese Migration in the 21st Century—and How It will Change the World, and Great Leader, Dear Leader: Demystifying North Korea Under The Kim Clan. Lintner is one of many blacklisted journalists who have not officially been allowed to enter Burma since 1985. The previous Burmese government body, the State Peace and Development Council, said his reports on Burma were groundless and based on wishful thinking. Despite this, blacklisted journalists tend to garner better respect as primary sources, and so Lintner was the first foreign journalist to learn about Aung San Suu Kyi's release from house arrest in 1995. Lintner has since shifted to Laos and North Korea, but he continues to be interested in Burma and he often contributes to The Irrawaddy magazine. He is also 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, among the rare handful of to enter 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 from 1993-95.
