DUNIA's Story

What should I do, and how should I live? Whenever I faced these questions, I found myself wanting a life spent meeting new people, recording and sharing our conversations and what I experienced along the way.

That desire took me to Indonesia just before I turned thirty. Starting in Jakarta, I moved between Kathmandu, New Delhi, Kuala Lumpur, and other cities, spending more than a decade reporting on the ground across Asia. Then, last year, the year I turned forty-two, I founded a news organization on November 1, one week before my birthday. I named it DUNIA, a word meaning “world.” Specializing in on-the-ground and investigative reporting across Asia, we chose to become an independent nonprofit newsroom to remain free from the influence of money and power.

DUNIA means “world.” There is one reason we chose this name. In South Korea, Asia is still too often seen only as an “affordable, nearby holiday destination” or a “dangerous, underdeveloped place.” But the Asia I encountered in more than a decade of reporting was never that simple. Alongside activists who brought extraordinary joy and creativity to their struggles were villages being submerged by dams built by Korean companies, and societies where the Third World’s vast political and economic possibilities lay in the shadow of dictatorship and development. DUNIA documents this world as a story connected to our own lives, rather than something that happens to other people and has nothing to do with Korea.

“Are people interested in Asia?” Around 2011, when I left for Indonesia to pursue a career reporting on the region, I heard this question often. I was also asked, “Can you make a living doing that?” Above all, I heard many journalists working in Korea ask, “Why do we need to know about international news?” Even correspondents posted to Asia by mainstream news organizations said this. DUNIA insists that international news, and the lives and stories of people across Asia, matter even when they do not immediately put food on our tables. Through our reporting, we work as a nonprofit organization toward a world where everyone can live as equals, regardless of race, language, religion, gender, or any other aspect of their identity.

Our reason for choosing a nonprofit model is simple. We believe that international coverage by established, mainstream commercial media, both in Korea and abroad, has failed to change an unequal world. Commercial international news creates hierarchies and distance between the lives of people who share this world and this moment in history. It sorts what matters more from what matters less according to the logic of capital and the demands of the market. These hierarchies and distances are especially clear in coverage of Asia. Disasters and tragedies are reduced to numbers. Deaths pass by in a single line of breaking news. The faces and voices of the people who live there appear only when something happens. Even when Korean companies and capital are deeply implicated, we have treated these events as “stories from faraway countries.” DUNIA seeks to close that distance.

To challenge the hierarchies of the global order and the habit of consuming international news for its momentary appeal, DUNIA follows two principles. The first is reporting on the ground. Rather than rewriting foreign news reports from a desk, we travel across Asia to meet people and document their lives. The second is investigative journalism. We examine how capital, political power, and religious authority disrupt people’s lives across the region, and follow stories that do not readily come to light. If Korean capital has destroyed Indonesia’s old-growth tropical forests and the ways of life of the people who live there, their stories are also ours. We ask people to understand these connections not out of a sense of duty as Koreans, but because that understanding can help us collectively scrutinize and hold in check the powers that leave us feeling powerless.

Over the past ten months, DUNIA has reported stories gathered on the ground: the Thailand–Cambodia border war; Korean scam networks operating in Cambodia; the realities of Korean tree-planting projects in Laos; people living in the aftermath of Myanmar’s 2021 coup; villages swept away by floods in Nepal and Tibet, and the traces of Korean capital entangled in those stories; and housing inequality in Asian cities. Two of us in Korea, together with more than ten reporters working on the ground across Southeast and South Asia, have documented the truths behind the headlines of the Asia we live in. We want to uncover more stories through firsthand reporting, bring previously undocumented material to light, and investigate what lies behind complex events. So far, 75 monthly supporters have joined us on this journey.

Holding this little booklet, you may be asking yourself similar questions. What should I do, and how should I live? At DUNIA, we have chosen journalism as a way of life we believe is worth pursuing. We have chosen a path that allows us to play even a small part in building a more equal and freer world, where we can shape our own lives. We want to change the world by going where stories unfold and documenting what we find. And we want to walk that path with more people.

DUNIA is sustained by people who share our commitment and mission, rather than by advertising or sponsorship. Monthly support gives us the most dependable means to set out on our next reporting trip. A one-time donation, too, is a powerful encouragement to those of us who have chosen this life. We hope our brief encounter at this booth today will grow into a lasting connection, with you helping to make the stories DUNIA tells possible.

September 22, 2026
Seulki Lee
Founder and Editor-in-Chief, DUNIA