This opportunity let me quickly become familiar with reporter’s profession and combine it with further studying of Korea and other countries where I lived and worked.
I got to North Korea for the first time in 1982, after the third year at College, and spent half a year in Pyongyang studying at Kim Il Sung state University. It was just enough to obtain first and the most unforgettable perceptions about the country. The main idea was to break through language barrier and I did it.
Two years after entering TASS, I got an assignment in Pyongyang where I spent as a correspondent for more than 5 years in total (two terms).
And I became the first Russian journalist who opened the first correspondent bureau in Seoul, South Korea, in 1991 soon after establishing relations between the two countries. Thus I was the first foreign correspondent who had stayed both in two Koreas for several years. So I’ve spent whole eight years on the Korean peninsula.
After Korea I also worked in Australia and Japan. As deputy chief bureau and a correspondent in Tokyo, I was with the Russian press agency “RIA Novosti”, where I am now as a foreign news commentator.
Besides the countries I have mentioned above, I also traveled in dozens of other places all over the world and wrote about this experience in magazines and newspapers.