About Roland de Courson

Roland de Courson is a French journalist and photographer born in Madrid, Spain, in 1970.

He started his career as a reporter in several local French-language newspapers in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, Canada.

He joined Agence France-Presse (AFP), an international news agency, in 1994, and was based in Paris, Madrid, Perpignan in southern France, Tokyo and Hong Kong. He is currently a global news editor in Seoul, South Korea.

Roland was the founder and the editor of the AFP Blogs (Correspondent, Making-of) which over the years became the couch for all the agency’s photographers and other reporters confronted with life-changing or traumatic situations during their assignments.

His main focus since arriving in Seoul in 2022 has been to document the Korean Division. But he has also worked on many other topics, including street photography and covering the political turmoil in the country after the botched declaration of martial law in 2024.

Roland de Courson is a graduate of the Ecole supérieure de journalisme de Lille – one of France’s top journalism schools, and of the Gobelins School of Image in Paris which awarded him a diploma in multimedia design and production. He also holds a Law degree from the Université René Descartes in Paris.