Search Results for: libel journalist

This guy is lucky he only got fined because there were conservative journalists thrown in jail after their libel suits:

Rhyu Si-min, a former health minister and an influential liberal commentator, was sentenced to a fine of 5 million won (US$4,000) by a court Thursday for defamatory comments made years ago about Minister of Justice Han Dong-hoon.

The Seoul Western District Court handed out the monetary penalty after convicting Rhyu of defaming Han by making false remarks about him in public between 2019 and 2020 when the minister was serving as a senior prosecutor.

Rhyu, who formerly headed a foundation memorializing late former President Roh Moo-hyun, was indicted in May last year for alleging on his YouTube channel in December 2019 and in a media interview in July 2020 that a prosecution department led by Han at that time illegally accessed his personal bank account and that of the memorial foundation sometime between late November and early December 2019.

Han, picked last month by President Yoon Suk-yeol as his administration’s first justice minister, was serving as head of the Supreme Prosecutors Office’s Anti-Corruption & Organized Crimes Department when Rhyu alleged the illegal account accesses occurred.

“(Han) appears to have suffered considerable psychological pain from the defendant’s remarks, as he was recognized as a prosecutor who abused his investigative power for an unjust purpose,” the Seoul court said, noting Rhyu may have considerable influence in the formation of public opinion, particularly as a YouTuber with more than 1 million subscribers.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

It looks like the ruling party realizes that the end of the Moon administration is nearing which means the potential of the conservatives winning the next election. If that was to happen no doubt the conservatives would look to start locking up their liberal political adversaries just like the Moon administration has done to them:

Ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) Chairman Lee Nak-yon is seeking to propose pardons for former presidents Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye, who have been behind bars on corruption charges, to President Moon Jae-in.

“I will propose pardons for the two former presidents to President Moon Jae-in at an appropriate time,” Lee said during a New Year interview with local news agency Yonhap. Lee said the pardons of the two former presidents could be a way to promote reconciliation and overcome the ideological gap between conservatives and liberals.

“This year is the de facto final year for President Moon to practice policies, and this matter (of pardoning the two former presidents) needs to be solved at a right time,” Lee said. “I am seeking to propose it (to President Moon) apart from pros and cons from the supporters of the ruling bloc. … The party will have to play a more active role from now on.”

As former President Lee was sentenced to 17 years by the Supreme Court last October while Park is still on trial, a special pardon and suspension of sentence will be sought for each case, if President Moon pardons the two former presidents.

Korea Times

Something that is important to remember is that this is about more than just Presidents Park and Lee being locked up, there has been numerous journalists and conservative commentators prosecuted and locked up as well for speaking out against the Moon administration.

Just another example that the freedoms that the people in Hong Kong once enjoyed are over:

Right before China retook control of Hong Kong in 1997, tycoon Jimmy Lai started Apple Daily in part to promote democracy in the city. For 25 years, the newspaper survived advertising boycotts and political pressure but never backed off its tough coverage of the Chinese government and pro-Beijing lawmakers.

It might not last through the summer. Hong Kong police arrested Lai and several of his top executives on Monday and sent hundreds of officers to search the Apple Daily offices, a demonstration of the broad potential for the new national security law to silence criticism and dissent beyond pro-democracy protests and activism.

Passed in June, the legislation bars “crimes of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces” as interpreted by the Chinese government and enforced by Beijing’s new security office in Hong Kong. Lai’s arrest wasn’t entirely unexpected, but it still shook the foundations of press freedom in the financial center and raised fears about what might come next.

His arrest under the security law was part of an investigation into an online activist group that received more than $129,000 (HK$1 million) funding from overseas bank accounts, the South China Morning Post reported Tuesday, citing unidentified people.

Agnes Chow, a prominent activist and founding member of the-now dissolved pro-democracy Demosisto party, also was arrested for on suspicion of breaching the security law, Cable TV reported Monday night.

Bloomberg

You can read more at the link, but if the CCP was smart they would just arrest these people for violating “libel laws” like the Moon administration in South Korea does. This sounds better than arresting people for violating national security laws. These arrests show they don’t care what international community thinks and just want to publicly show the people in Hong Kong that the way things were before are over.

ROK Drop favorite Dr. Tara O has a good and very detailed article published about the impeachment of former President Park Geun-hye. The crux of Park’s impeachment has always been the tablet PC which many people don’t even realize was likely a fraud and not even submitted as evidence during President Park’s criminal trial:

JTBC’s claims about the tablet have not been verified.  In fact, the government’s forensic report indicates many of the documents were put into the tablet after JTBC found the tablet.  The forensic report also showed that there were multiple users of the tablet, so it could not determine to whom the tablet belonged.  The forensic report did not surface until it was too late–a year later, which is a long time after Park was already impeached. Some continued to question the validity of JTBC and Sohn Suk-hee’s claims about the tablet, and the loudest were put in jail–journalists Byun Hee-jai, and later Hwang Ui-won, Byun’s journalist colleague at the same small media outlet called MediaWatch. 

Despite what the forensic report shows, the prosecutor for Byun Hee-jai maintains that the tablet belongs to Choi, and the judges have refused, thus far, to grant Byun’s request for further discovery of the truths behind the tablet–a violation of the principle of self-defense.  Many people do not even know that the tablet was not the “smoking gun” evidence for the impeachment that JTBC claimed it was. 

In fact, the court never even admitted the tablet as evidence for either Park Geun-hye’s impeachment trial or the criminal trials that followed.  JTBC later stated that “even if there was no such thing as the [insignificant] tablet PC…, [it wouldn’t have mattered]” after initially stating the tablet was the “smoking gun.”

East Asia Research Center

Here is the most suspicious part of Park’s impeachment, the rush to get rid of her:

The National Assembly impeached the nation’s president, Park Geun-hye, in a rush.  There was no hearing, no investigation, and the voting occurred only six days after the introduction of the impeachment bill.  This rushed and unreasonable, if not unconstitutional, impeachment process differs from the U.S. President Richard Nixon case, in which there existed two separate investigations totaling 1 year and 6 months.

I think it is arguable that the impeachment had to be rushed because a true investigation would have uncovered that the tablet PC was not the smoking gun the media made it out to be.

You can read much more about Park’s impeachment at the link.

I am really not surprised at all by this decline, it was actually very predictable considering his economic and North Korea policies had little chance of ever working:

President Moon Jae-in’s approval rating has hit the lowest level of his presidency while his disapproval rating reached its highest point, according to a Gallup Korea poll released on Friday.

According to the weekly poll, Moon’s approval rating was 41 percent and 49 percent gave negative responses to Moon’s performance. 

Moon’s approval rating, which skyrocketed in his early months of the presidency, has now dropped to the level of the share of votes he won in the presidential election two years ago. Moon has lost additional supporters, mostly moderates, that he had attracted since he first took office.

Moon started his presidency in May 2017 with an over 80 percent approval rating and maintained strong figures throughout his first year. In May 2018, shortly after Moon’s first summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, his approval rating was 83 percent, according to Gallup Korea.

Joong Ang Ilbo

Keep in mind that President Moon’s approval rating dropped to 41% even though he forcibly took control of most of the major media in South Korea and has been imprisoning opposition journalists.

Conservative journalists were thrown in jail for libel even though they reported true information, and a presidential aide is convicted of corruption and is sentenced to jail, and yet is able to walk around a free man:

A court on Thursday handed down a six-year prison term to a former senior secretary to President Moon Jae-in over a corruption case related to a gaming industry body, and one year in jail, suspended for two years, for abuse of power.
Jun Byung-hun, an ex-presidential aide for political affairs and a former lawmaker, has been suspected of forcing two home shopping channels — Lotte Home Shopping and GS Home Shopping — and telecom company KT to donate 550 million won (US$514,260) between 2014 and 2017 to the Korea e-Sports Association, over which he practically held control. But he was not taken into custody after the ruling. 
The Seoul Central Court also slapped him with a fine of 350 million won and an overdraft fee of 25 million won.
The court did not issue a warrant to arrest him as it judged that “it is appropriate for him to appeal to a higher court and solve the dispute (with the prosecution) without detention.”
“His criminal responsibility is grave,” the court said in its verdict, adding that Jun damaged the fairness and integrity of parliament by accepting bribes from companies related to his parliamentary activities.

Yonhap News

You can read more at the link.

The former Finance Ministry employee who accused the Moon administration of intentionally raising the national debt has now been taken in custody for supposedly trying to commit suicide:

The former Finance Ministry official who accused the Blue House of fiddling with state coffers and intervening in private companies went missing for hours on Thursday after leaving a suicide note on the internet that read he was going to hang himself in a motel – until police found him alive.

Officers at Gwanak Police Precinct provided scant details to the local press about Shin Jae-min’s health condition but said he was hospitalized in Seoul in a “favorable state.”

Police refused to hold a press briefing detailing how they discovered Shin or what he was doing by the time they arrived at the motel in Gwanak District, southern Seoul, saying they didn’t want to “stimulate” someone who was already “mentally instable.” 

Joong Ang Ilbo

Shin allegedly left a suicide note as a web posting on a forum hosted by his alma mater Korea University:

In his post, Shin wrote that he thought people would trust him and his whistle-blowing accusations if he died. 

Shin added he hoped Korean society would adopt a culture that embraces whistle-blowers and reveal how government policies are made to the general public. 

Shin lamented blowing the whistle on a left-leaning government, saying he could have received legal help from Minbyun – Lawyers for a Democratic Society, a non-governmental organization with special consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council, if he was whistle-blowing on a conservative Blue House. 

Shin said he was “deeply disappointed” after hearing that every attorney in Minbyun refused to defend him if Shin revealed to the press he was being backed by the progressive group. 

I don’t know why he was surprised the Minbyun group would not help him because they are notorious for basically being Kim Jong-un’s lawyers in South Korea. They have been used to legally attack North Korean defectors, one of the groups behind the US beef riots, and have long attacked the USFK relocation plan. They have recently been calling for the signing of a peace treaty to end the Korean War so US troops can be withdrawn.

Minbyun of course are not going to do anything that would damage a North Korean friendly administration in South Korea. Shin best toughen up because the leftists in South Korea know how to defend their own and will do everything they can to destroy him. Just ask the conservative journalists sitting in jail for reporting accurate information about the Moon administration.

It seems like every week President Moon Jae-in’s approval rating continues to fall to a new low, however I don’t think it is low enough to really effect any change in his current North Korea policies yet:

President Moon Jae-in’s approval rating dropped to a record low last week, a poll showed Monday.

According to a survey by pollster Realmeter, 47.1 percent of the public said they approved of Moon’s performance, down 1.4 percentage points from last week. 

Amid an ongoing controversy over the alleged surveillance of civilians by Cheong Wa Dae, the approval rating fell to the lowest in three weeks, according to Realmeter. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but his approval rating continues to fall despite controlling most of the news media in South Korea and imprisoning and launching lawsuits against journalists that oppose him.

As we have seen repeatedly the Moon administration is willing to go great lengths to protect their friends and punish their enemies.  Now they are targeting a corruption whistleblower and letting the media know they will go after them as well if they continue to report his claims:

A former investigator with the Blue House special inspection bureau accused President Moon Jae-in’s top aides of covering up bribery allegations against Korean Ambassador to Russia Woo Yoon-keun and said he was kicked out of the prestigious Blue House team for looking into the case.

Kim Tae-wu, an investigator with the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office who was temporarily dispatched to the Blue House last year to work for the special inspection bureau, told local media on Saturday that he was victimized for targeting Woo, a high-profile figure in Korean liberal politics who formerly served as a lawmaker in the ruling Democratic Party (DP) and has close ties with Moon. In an email to several media outlets, Kim said he wanted to shed light on the truth and recover his tarnished reputation.

Both the Blue House and Woo adamantly denied Kim’s claims that the envoy was bribed. In scathing remarks, Yoon Young-chan, Moon’s senior secretary for public affairs, referred to Kim as a “loach” in a written statement issued to Blue House correspondents on Saturday, saying the investigator was “completely muddying stream water” now that he’s been cornered.

Yoon added that the truth will soon be revealed and the Blue House will “certainly” press legal charges against Kim for the spread of false information and defamation. Yoon went on to express “deep regret” for the local media outlets who were writing stories based on “unilateral claims” from Kim. Kim was one of 20 to 30 members of the so-called special inspection bureau under the office of Cho Kuk, presidential senior secretary for civil affairs.

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but the last paragraph is another example of how the Moon administration uses the nation’s libel laws to silence and imprison critics.  

The Executive Editor for the Hankyoreh, Kim Jong-gu has written an open letter to the New York Times complaining about their bias against President Trump:

But as I read the newspaper’s reporting, I discovered that the Times’ reputation wasn’t grounded in fact. The pages of the newspaper were swamped with articles that openly supported Kerry. I also sincerely wanted Bush to lose the race, but the Times’ one-sided reporting made the allegations of bias in the South Korean press look like small potatoes.  (…………….)

As a South Korean citizen, however, I can’t help noticing a paradox: President Trump’s outsider status, his profound hostility to the foreign policy establishment, and his gambler-like drive to win have in fact improved the chances of peace on the Korean Peninsula. I find Trump’s unfiltered language, his wild behavior and his arrogant egotism as disgusting as anyone else. But there’s one thing for which he deserves credit, and that’s his boldness in negotiating with North Korea.

The Times is widely regarded as a progressive-leaning newspaper. Progressives believe in peace; they believe in reconciliation and win-win arrangements, not confrontation and quarrels. Obviously, it will be very difficult to bring about North Korea’s denuclearization and impossible to predict the outcome. Just as obviously, it’s the job of the press to offer a clear-headed analysis of these efforts and raise concerns when they fall short.  [Hankyoreh]

You can read more at the link, but it is a bit laughable that the Hankyoreh is complaining about bias when they are well known for being the most left wing biased major newspaper in South Korea.

I did find this statement quite entertaining from the article: “Progressives believe in peace; they believe in reconciliation and win-win arrangements, not confrontation and quarrels.”  Are South Korean conservative journalists thrown in jail for disagreeing with President Moon a sign of liberal “reconciliation”?  Is using labor unions to attack conservatives something that should be considered non-confrontational?  I could go on and on about the hypocrisy in the article which just shows the Hankyoreh should be the last newspaper in South Korea to complain about bias anywhere else.