Anna Fifield, Tokyo bureau chief

In this year of alarming progress in North Korea’s nuclear weapons program and alarming talk about military options for dealing with it, I wanted to shine a spotlight on the people who know Kim Jong Un’s threats the best: the North Koreans living under his brutal reign every day. There are 25 million people who have to find ways to survive in Kim’s North Korea, however they can, and who are at constant risk of being sent to labor camps if they so much as question the leader. We talked to two dozen people who had lived in North Korea after Kim assumed power and had escaped, and then we let them recount their stories in their own words. I hope this helps the outside world to see North Koreans as human beings with feelings and dreams like the rest of us, and not as the brainwashed robots they are often portrayed to be.

‘I had struggled to believe that the stories were real.’

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Louisa Loveluck, Middle East correspondent

Our investigation into the torture of prisoners inside Syria's military hospitals was the most haunting experience of my reporting career. I’d heard rumors of terrible goings on inside the facilities for years, including one particularly shocking account of a sick prisoner being executed in his hospital bed. It was the stuff of nightmares. So terrible that until I began to meet survivors, I had struggled to believe the stories were true.

In interviews across Lebanon, Turkey and Europe, more than a dozen survivors and army defectors described horrors in Syrian military hospitals for which war-crimes lawyers say they have struggled to find a modern parallel. Bit by bit, the jigsaw came together, ultimately revealing how ailing prisoners were tortured as they lay shackled to beds packed with dying men; how corpses were piled in bathrooms, outhouses and anywhere else they could fit.

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It took months to track down survivors, and many of them remained too traumatized to tell their stories. I will forever be grateful to those who did.

The response to the piece was overwhelming. More survivors emailed to tell their own stories. The father of a young man last seen going to Hospital 601 described the pain of reading the article and wondering whether his son had suffered similar abuse. Tens of thousands of Syrians remain in government jails, their fates unknown. We will probably never know how many have been killed.

“It was heartening to see people in this middle-of-nowhere village taking their responsibility to vote so seriously.”

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Vidhi Doshi, New Delhi correspondent

About three-quarters of the way up a seven-hour hike in the Nepalese Himalayas, a part of me started questioning why I had volunteered to do this story on election day in the mountains. I was trying to reach a remote Sherpa village called Tempathang, which is inaccessible by road. I was working with Nepalese journalist Pradeep Bashyal, and he had been told that the villagers of Tempathang planned to walk all the way down to the polling booths to cast their votes in this historic election in Nepal. The trail seemed to go on and on, my legs were aching, and I couldn't stop thinking about pizza. I thought it was mad to go through all this hassle to vote.

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The villagers had started making their way down the mountain the day before and seemed cheerful. Many of them carried bedding or baskets that they filled up with groceries for the return journey. Many were old. Some were wearing their best clothes for the vote. Asked why they were undertaking this journey, most of them said the same word — “development.”

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It was heartening to see people in this middle-of-nowhere village taking their responsibility to vote so seriously. I'll never forget the optimism of those voters. I hope their hopefulness is rewarded. And I hope that by the next time I visit Tempathang, someone will have laid down tarmac.

“I looked up and they were all crying.”

Annie Gowen, New Delhi bureau chief

In early December, I met two young brothers in a refugee camp in Bangladesh whom I will never forget. I had returned again to the camps where 625,000 Rohingya refugees have sought shelter since August after fleeing a violent military crackdown in Burma that the United Nations' human rights chief said contained “elements of genocide.”

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We met Shamsul, 8, and Jafar, 11, after an evening soccer game in one of the camps. They wept as they told us of Burmese security forces surrounding their village and killing dozens. The boys said their father was executed and mother and three siblings burned alive in their home. At this point, I had three people with me. I looked up, and they were all crying. The brothers walked for two days without food to the border and ultimately found safety in Bangladesh. After several days, they were reunited with an uncle and aunt, who are raising them in a small tent along with their six children, ages 1 to 12.

The boys are physically safe now but are still navigating the emotional landscape of grief: “Everybody has parents — but us,” Shamsul sometimes says. His aunt says it is a miracle if the brothers can get to bed in the evening without one of them crying himself to sleep.

“[We] found a level of lawlessness that I didn’t know still existed in Mexico.”

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Josh Partlow, Mexico bureau chief

When you get out onto Mexico’s lonely Highway 51 in the state of Guerrero, an area known as the Tierra Caliente — the Hot Lands — many strange things start happening. The temperature spikes drastically as you descend from the foothills down to the desert floor. You see bizarre landmarks, such as the giant head of former president Lázaro Cárdenas carved out of a boulder. And you discover, or at least I did, the horrifying degree to which heroin traffickers dominate the lives of some rural Mexicans.

Photographer Michael Robinson Chavez and I found a level of lawlessness that I didn’t know still existed in Mexico. Towns controlled by drug gangs or gun-toting civilian militias. Villages reduced to ghost towns by extreme extortion demands or mass kidnappings. Empty schools and hospitals. This story revealed to me a nightmarish side of America’s taste for heroin that I hadn’t fully appreciated until I drove out on that Mexican road.

“My lasting memory was of these guys sitting on a hot rooftop every night, just dying for their lives to begin.”

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William Booth, London bureau chief

My four years covering Israel and the Palestinians were drawing to a close — and the list of stories I wanted to report was as long as ever. I covered the 2014 war in the Gaza Strip, which was all action — and terrifying. But Gaza is mostly this strange, otherworldly place that just grinds on and on, isolated, trapped, its own little planet. So I wanted to tell the story of what it is like to be a young person in Gaza who does nothing all day. This isn't so easy. To write about nothing. But youth unemployment in Gaza is an unreal 60 percent.

So Hazem Balousha, The Post's stringer in Gaza, and I found bored young people, so full of dreams — of jobs, marriage, travel, money, anything — but absolutely stuck. They were a wasted generation — and they rightly blamed the ruling Hamas, probably more than Israel or Egypt. My lasting memory was of these guys sitting on a hot rooftop every night, just dying for their lives to begin.

“The staff of Cumhuriyet kept publishing, every day.”

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Kareem Fahim, Istanbul bureau chief

At a moment when Turkey has earned notoriety as the most prolific jailer of reporters in the world — imprisoning somewhere between 73 and upward of 120 journalists, according to various estimates — I wanted to know how the staff of Cumhuriyet managed to put out a newspaper every day, without knowing which story, headline or photograph it published might incur the wrath of authorities.

The week I visited the newsroom, 11 of the newspaper’s employees were in prison — part of a group of 17 journalists and executives from the paper who were on trial over allegations of links to terrorist groups.

I have worked in the Middle East for a long time, watching countless local journalists navigate the “red lines” of autocratic governments. It can be hard for people to understand how debilitating those pressures can be: not the fleeting danger of war zones, but a dull and unceasing peril that looms over the reporters, their families and their friends.

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What made the situation for Turkey’s journalists so difficult, though, was that the government’s red lines were so unclear. After a coup attempt in the summer of 2016, the authorities suddenly saw enemies everywhere at once. “Irrational” was the word one columnist used to describe the law enforcement atmosphere. But the staff of Cumhuriyet kept publishing, every day.

“I enjoyed getting to know them, even if just for a couple of days.”

Michael Birnbaum, Brussels bureau chief

It was the Mediterranean at the height of tourist season. But for these migrant boys, the sea was a place of terror, not relaxation. That’s what the swimming lessons in Sicily were trying to fix.

This was a year when doors started closing on migrants and refugees around the world, and I embraced the chance to write a story about a community welcoming a crowd of under-18 boys from sub-Saharan Africa. The swimming lessons aimed to give the new arrivals the skills to scrape by in the hardscrabble city of Messina, which is largely dependent on the sea.

All of the boys had made the dangerous journey by dinghy from the Libyan coast. Some had seen their friends drown. Others had escaped slavery in Libya. Some could barely talk about their experiences. But there they were, learning lifesaving skills and learning to swim with scuba flippers. I enjoyed getting to know them, even if just for a couple of days.

But in a sign of Italy’s direction with elections expected in March 2018, even some of the swimming group’s volunteers were skeptical of the politicians whose decisions had contributed to the influx of migrants. Soon Italy may not be so welcoming — and these volunteers seemed to be hardening their hearts in real time.

“For a decade, he combed the entire country looking for his daughter.”

Simon Denyer, Beijing bureau chief

The abduction of children is a massive and sometimes overlooked problem in China, but it was great to be able to report a story with a happy ending. It’s this incredible tale of a father and a daughter who were separated when she was abducted by child traffickers on her way home from school at age 5. For a decade, he combed the entire country looking for his daughter. But she kept her parents’ memories alive, too. When she was finally given a smartphone as a teenager, she searched online with only one word in her head — “Dabaiyiang” — not knowing whether it was the name of a village or a street. Incredibly, the father and daughter found each other again when she was 15. Two years later, their bond is obvious. If you’ve ever seen the movie “Lion” about a boy rediscovering his long-lost family in India, this was the Chinese version.

“Authorities could not dismiss the news — there was video.”

Emily Rauhala, China correspondent based in Beijing

In 2017, crying “fake news” became an quick way for powerful men to quash reports of human rights abuses. The Philippines was no exception. Despite widespread evidence of systematic police abuse in President Rodrigo Duterte’s campaign against suspected drug users and traffickers, his government regularly denied wrongdoing.

When human rights workers caught Manila police officers holding prisoners in a secret cell behind a bookshelf at a station, authorities could not dismiss the news — there was video. The footage confirmed reports that officers were picking people off the streets in the slums, holding them without charge and extorting money from their families.

Reviewing previously unreleased footage, we found something more: The rights workers who uncovered the cell for the television cameras left the scene without securing the prisoners’ release. They had a “gala” to attend, one said.

Instead of being whisked to safety, the prisoners were handed straight back to police — a twist that highlighted the failure of Philippine institutions to protect those caught in Duterte’s war.

“I loved that I was able to connect those two people.”

Ruth Eglash, Middle East correspondent based in Jerusalem

One thing I love about my job is how my stories can reach and connect people all over the world. A few days after this article appeared, I received an email from a man identifying himself as the soldier on the right-hand side of the photo. He wrote that after the war, he had moved to Washington and read The Post regularly. He also said that he did not recall posing for the photo or remember the others pictured with him and asked to be put in touch with Abraham Rabinovich, the journalist I had interviewed for the story, to see whether there were any more photos of him from that historic moment.

I loved that I was able to connect those two people and be reminded of a time before smartphones and selfies, when a picture was worth more than a thousand words.

“What was this American really up to?”

David Filipov, Moscow bureau chief

My favorite story of the year came about as a result of an online argument about where the Ural Mountains end and where Siberia begins. It turned out that people in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg didn’t know. A producer at a local Internet TV station, fascinated that an American journalist was interested, invited me out, and we went looking together for this magical border.

On the way, I ran into people who tried to explain what divides the character, cuisine and courtesies of the Urals from Siberian ones. I also encountered people suspicious about my motives. What was this American really up to? The result was a picaresque romp that happened to coincide with a bout of subzero weather that killed the TV crew’s drone midflight and froze my iPhone during an attempt to do a Facebook Live.

My camera and pen proved somewhat more resilient, and I was able to capture some of the crispy landscapes and craggy personalities that make the remote Urals, and the even remoter Siberia, so human and so familiar.

My Russian hosts and I made a short film about my trip that was almost more fun than the story I wrote; we spent hours cracking up while we edited passages of me trudging through deep snow, asking people to point me toward Siberia. (Unfortunately, the company has since changed ownership, and the Russian film is no longer available.) The cherry on top for this project was that in this year of momentous geopolitical events featuring a certain Kremlin occupant in the starring role, a story about Russia that never mentioned Vladimir Putin made it onto the front page of The Post.

“I am sure that I could have written a similar piece from every single European city recently affected by terrorism.”

Rick Noack, foreign affairs reporter

While helping to cover more than a dozen major terrorist attacks in Europe over the past two years, it was difficult not to notice a common pattern in the response to those incidents. Wherever I went, I encountered Muslim residents fearful that the public anger at extremists would ultimately fall back on them.

Those fears were especially pronounced in the British city of Birmingham, which I visited after the Westminster Bridge attack in March, an attack carried out by an extremist who had previously lived in Birmingham. When I visited the city’s central mosque two days after the attack, local faith leaders told me about an almost instant rise in hate emails and threats. There were fears that the tensions would disrupt years-long efforts to establish trust between local authorities and Muslim communities.

I wrote about those concerns from Birmingham, but I am sure that I could have written a similar piece from every single European city recently affected by terrorism. It may be only a snapshot into one local community, but the broader story is at the core of what shaped European politics this year and is likely to continue to do so next year.

“That they were so normal, and training under such a radical organization, was what worried me.”

Andrew Roth, Moscow correspondent

Since the beginning of the Ukraine conflict in 2014, I'd noticed a lot of men in Russia living with an acute siege mentality, looking for purpose, with a sort of wide-eyed earnestness that could quickly turn into fanaticism. Most of the men who attended this Partizan crash course in combat did not have strong political views, but their instructors certainly did. The nationalists who ran the course were looking for future allies in a clash of civilizations with the Muslim world.

There was a lot of suspicion about why a Post journalist would spend a few days running through abandoned buildings and frozen swamps with an amateur militia of men lugging replica AKs. But some of them eventually opened up about their extremely ordinary lives: Most were white-collar workers or adventure seekers, a few had to beg their wives to be able to take the week off for the course. That they were so normal, and training under such a radical organization, was what worried me.

“Six months on, the pain felt by many is still acute.”

Karla Adam, London correspondent

The Grenfell fire tragedy, which killed 71 people, is the most memorable story I covered in 2017. We had a busy spring in our bureau, covering terrorist attacks and a general election. And then, on June 14, we woke up to reports of an inferno ripping through a high-rise building in west London. I rushed over to the tower, which was still burning. The eventual charred ruin looked like something out of another era, not London in 2017. I spoke with survivors and witnesses for the stories my colleague Griff Witte and I wrote on the day. I also took some video from the scene.

It was a humbling experience talking to the disabled Syrian father who hobbled out of the burning building on crutches, the Iranian student who watched his neighbor jump out of a window, the British designer in an adjacent building who saw children banging on windows before disappearing behind a wall of smoke. I continue to visit the neighborhood and talk to survivors and family members — six months on, the pain felt by many is still acute.

The fire, the deadliest in modern British history, raises many questions about British society — from housing to fire-safety measures to the gap between London’s wealthiest and most impoverished residents, both extremes living only a few blocks from each other in some cases. These are stories we will continue to tell.

“Brexit, I soon discovered, isn’t the only issue setting off fevered debate in the postcard-perfect British countryside.”

Griff Witte, Berlin bureau chief

The return of the lynx is the passion project of British conservationist Paul O’Donoghue, and for a day we navigated the wild forests in the English-Scottish borderlands where he plans to help the ambush predator retake its rightful place as Britain’s top cat.

Of course, in those green and pleasant lands, where sheep have conquered every hilltop, farmers envision O’Donoghue’s tufted-eared felines as a lamb-slaughtering nightmare.

And so the lynx, gone for 1,300 years, may have to wait just a little longer. Brexit, I soon discovered, is not the only issue setting off fevered debate in the postcard-perfect British countryside.

“The camp was full of people committed to finding a better life.”

Kevin Sieff, Africa bureau chief

I have spent much of the past year documenting the way residents of the Dadaab Refugee Camp, in northern Kenya, were coping with a slew of anti-refugee measures. They were suddenly blocked from resettlement in America. Their food rations were slashed. Many of them were pressured to return to the chaos and violence of Somalia.