Mellissa Fung

Mellissa Veronica Fung is a Canadian journalist with CBC News, appearing regularly as a field correspondent on The National.

Education and career Fung and her younger sister are the daughters of Kellog and Joyce Fung. She was born in Hong Kong, and her family moved to Vancouver when she was four years old. After graduating in 1994, she earned a master's degree from Columbia School of Journalism in 1995. From February 2001 to 2003 she reported for CBC-TV News in Vancouver. Since December 2003, she has served as a national reporter for CBC Television, working out of Toronto and Regina. They were later implicated by Afghan authorities in the kidnapping and detained,

The kidnapping occurred two days before the 2008 Canadian federal election, and CBC requested a press blackout while negotiations were conducted with the kidnappers, out of concern that widespread media coverage would complicate matters. Though the incident was covered in Afghan press, the blackout was honoured by all Canadian media and Fung's kidnapping remained generally unknown within Canada.

Fung was finally released on November 8, 2008, after weeks of negotiations. A spokesman for the governor of Wardak Province indicated that local tribal elders and provincial council members negotiated Fung's release and that no ransom was paid. However, it was later revealed that Afghan intelligence determined the identity of the kidnapper, abducted his family, then demanded Fung be released in a prisoner exchange.

On November 12, 2008, she was interviewed about her kidnapping by CBC Radio's Anna Maria Tremonti, in Dubai. The interview later earned Tremonti and Fung a gold medal at the 2009 New York Festivals Radio Programming and Promotion Awards.

Fung wrote the book Under an Afghan Sky about her experiences. During an interview with a columnist from The Globe and Mail, she said "I thought it might be cathartic...But it wasn’t."

In 2021 Fung released the documentary film Captive, which linked her abduction experience to those of three Nigerian women who had been abducted by Boko Haram. The film received a Canadian Screen Award nomination for Best Feature Length Documentary at the 10th Canadian Screen Awards in 2022.

Fung was appointed to the Order of Canada in 2024. She currently lives in Toronto, Canada.

Novel

For a May 2026 book release, Fung collaborated with Canadian crime-fiction writer Louise Penny to author The Last Mandarin, about a world-prominent first generation Chinese-American human rights activist and the daughter in her shadow, propelled "from the Oval Office to Ohio and then ... Hong Kong, [unlocking] old legends and languages long ago invented by women," to confront an explosive conspiracy of international scope.