John McBeth

McBeth is the son of Sandy McBeth, a Taranaki dairy farmer, and Isla Dickinson, and was born in Wanganui, New Zealand.[2] He attended New Plymouth Boys' High School.[3] McBeth commenced work at the Taranaki Herald on 8 February 1962 and moved to the Auckland Star in late 1965.[4]

McBeth left New Zealand around 1970 and headed for Fleet Street in London, but never made it there.[5] The cargo vessel that he was aboard ran aground during its night-time entry into Tanjung Priok Harbour in Indonesia so he spent time in Jakarta before travelling to Singapore and on to Bangkok.[6]

McBeth commenced employment at the Bangkok Post shortly after arriving in Thailand, eorking with Roger Crutchley, Peter Finucane and Tony Waltham.[7] McBeth covered stories relating to the Khmer Rouge reign of terror in Cambodia and the Indochinese refugee crisis and appeared briefly as an extra in Michael Cimino's film The Deer Hunter (1978).[8] He also worked as a freelance reporter in Thailand for Agence France-Presse, United Press International (UPI), London's Daily Telegraph and spend three years writing for Hong Kong's Asiaweek.[9]

In 1972 he reported that US Airforce B-52 aircraft were being disproportionately brought down in bombing raids because of flying at low altitudes and on predictable routes .[10][11]

In December 1972, four Black September Arab guerillas took over the Israeli Embassy in Bangkok. Six Israeli hostages were taken but released after a 19-hour drama that ended when Supreme Command Chief of Staff Air Chief Marshall Dawee Chullasapya and Deputy Foreign Minister Chatichai Choonhavan took the places of the hostages.[12] They flew with the terrorists to Egypt.[13] During the siege, McBeth spoke to one of the hostage takers on the telephone.[14] In hindsight, he was of the view that the conversation revealed what was finally to break the siege: the terrorists expressed remorse that, unknown to them, they had made their move on the auspicious day marking the investiture of Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn, King Bhumibol Adulyadej's son.[15]

In 1975-76, he reported on the wave of refugees that washed across Southeast Asia at the end of the Vietnam War, the Thai fishermen/pirates who raped and murdered Vietnamese boat people, and the Thai soldiers who forced Cambodian refugees back into a Khmer Rouge minefield instead of allowing them to enter Thailand.[16] McBeth was one of the few journalists who detected early on the horrifying extent of the Khmer Rouge Killing Fields purges, though this was initially met with incredulity by other correspondents.[17]

In May 1979, McBeth joined the staff of the Far Eastern Economic Review;.[18] In his five years there, he saw five coups in Thailand, including the aborted one that killed his close friend, the Australian cameraman, Neil Davis, in September 1985.[7]

He then went to head the Review's South Korean bureau. In his three years in Seoul, he focused on the country's transformation from an authoritarian to a fledgling democratic state.[19] He reported on the arrest and trial of the North Korean spy Kim Hyon-hui, who helped bring down Korean Air Flight 858 over the Gulf of Martaban in November 1987, later became a Christian, and married her South Korean bodyguard; and the spectacular 1988 Seoul Olympics.[20]

McBeth together with Nayan Chanda and Shada Islam, revealed in the Review North Korea's efforts to develop a nuclear weapon. American and South Korean officials feared that North Korea was building a reprocessing plant next to a 30 mW nuclear reactor north of Pyongyang.[21] They broke the story in the Review after it was leaked by the Australian Ambassador to South Korea, Richard Broinowski, who had seen American satellite photographs of the Yongbyon site.[22]

McBeth's 2011 book Reporter: Forty Years Covering Asia. described many of his stories. .[26]

His 2016 book, The Loner: President Yudhoyono's Decade of Trial and Indecision, provides a review of the decade that Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono spent in power.[27]

McBeth wrote for Singapore's The Straits Times from the end of 2004 until early 2015, specializing in Indonesian affairs. His work has also appeared in the Asia Times, The National (Abu Dhabi), the Nikkei Asian Review, the South China Morning Post and the Australian Strategic Policy Institute's official blog The Strategist.

McBeth lives in Bali with his wife, the Indonesian journalist Yuli Ismartono.[7] Ismartono is the mother of CNN correspondent Atika Shubert.[28]