I have written much about the arrest of Korean journalist Byun Hee-jae because his articles have been largely the only reporting challenging the established narrative of why former President Park Geun-hye was impeached. So what is the established narrative of why President Park was impeached?
I think this December 2016 article by Suki Kim in Foreign Policy best sums up the established narrative that many in the public and the media believe. ROK Heads may remember that Suki Kim is the journalist that taught English at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology for six months recording notes for what would become her 2014 book, Without You, There Is No Us: Undercover Among the Sons of North Korea’s Elite. I have no issues with Ms. Kim, but I am just using her article as example of how members of the media largely parroted the established narrative at the time that brought down former President Park Geun-hye.
Here is the opening paragraph in her Foreign Policy article about the impeachment of President Park and the rise of independent journalists in South Korea:
In late fall, I left New York City for Seoul, intending to visit for just a few days. Then, on Oct. 24, a small South Korean cable network called JTBC revealed that its reporters had discovered a tablet that had belonged to Choi Soon-sil, the hidden power behind President Park Geun-hye. The data on the device exposed a web of unprecedented corruption. In response, millions of people took to the streets, waving candles in protest, until Dec. 9, when South Korea’s parliament voted to impeach Park. [Foreign Policy]
From the start of Ms. Kim’s article you can see the importance of the tablet PC that JTBC discovered. Would the tablet PC have been as important if people knew that JTBC had changed their story three times on how the tablet was discovered? Would the importance of the tablet had been the same if people knew that the tablet PC could not be conclusively proven to be Choi’s. Another interesting fact is that the tablet PC did not contain Korean document editing-capable software. So how was Choi supposedly editing sensitive documents for President Park on a tablet that did not have the software to do this? The report with these findings was not released until a year after President Park’s impeachment and the public interest in the tablet had died down.
The big thing people should think about is in their own personal lives, how many people they know that leave their phone or tablet PC without password protection? If you believe JTBC, this is essentially what Choi Soon-shil did, she left a tablet PC filled with sensitive documents in old office space with no password protection that allowed JTBC to find and read the documents. This alone made me skeptical much less the other facts that have since emerged about the tablet PC.
Ms. Kim continues in her article by making an odd attack against President Trump that he received favorable coverage from the media before the US election:
Having just come from the United States, where a credulous media had been manipulated by the winning presidential candidate rather than holding him to account, I was particularly sensitive to the resilient and creative role played by South Korean reporters.
I would agree that during the Republican primaries that Donald Trump received oversized media coverage compared to other candidates. This is because he drove ratings for the networks due to his celebrity not because they supported him in anyway. Once he was the Republican nominee it was like a switch was flipped and the mainstream media changed to relentless negative attacks that did not stop during the lead up to the election and continues to this day.
Ms. Kim’s article continues about conservative bias in the mainstream Korean media under President Park:
The vast influence of South Korea’s independent media is a belated product of dismal failures by the country’s establishment media. For instance, there have long been three main television stations in South Korea: MBC, KBS, and SBS. But after the 2007 election to the presidency of the conservative Lee Myung-bak, the heads of the news stations were replaced by people with an explicitly pro-government stance, essentially turning the press into a propaganda machine. In 2010, thousands of journalists went on strike in response, many of whom were members of the “386 Generation,” a term for those born in the 1960s who went to college during the 1980s dictatorship and student riots. Some of the strikers eventually resigned while others were transferred to lesser divisions where they would not be able to report. It was also around this time that the government took a hand in setting up brand-new cable stations, called jongpyun, linked to the existing establishment newspapers, which were mostly in favor of the ruling Saenuri Party.
The conservative bias in the media during the Park administration is true, but there was left wing bias in the mainstream media during the prior liberal governments. The left wing media even tried to overturn the election of former President Lee Myung-bak with the anti-US beef protests in 2008. The Korean media aired false claims about US beef that caused violent anti-government protests.
Lee came to power after a decade of left wing rule in South Korea that saw him begin to undue many of the initiative of the prior governments. In response the bias media and left wing groups attempted to get President Lee to resign a few months after being elected with the false US beef claims. It can be argued that what the Korean left accomplished in getting rid of President Park is what they first attempted against President Lee in 2008.
After the anti-US beef protests President Lee decided to drive out the left wing board members from the major media outlets and use libel laws against other critics. The political polarization of the Korean media has only continued under the Moon administration which used union protests and violence to drive out board members from KBS and MBC appointed by conservative politicians so the coverage could return to the left wing bias they had under prior liberal governments.
Ms. Kim continues in her article discussing the Sewol disaster:
During the Sewol disaster, however, energized independent journalists finally managed to break the partisan establishment media’s monopoly on the public’s attention. What on the surface appeared to be just an unfortunate accident struck at the emotional core of South Koreans in the same way the 9/11 attacks did for Americans because it revealed a pervasive rottenness under the surface of the country’s political system. It was later revealed that the sinking and the lack of rescue efforts were linked to federal-level corruption involving the ferry owners, the insurance company, the Korean coast guard, and the Korean navy.
No argument from me in regards to the corruption surrounding the Sewol disaster, however, this is nothing new and not something caused by President Park. The fact that a business was able to run an unsafe ferry operation due to corruption is unsurprising to me. This is the country that has had bridges and shopping malls collapse in on themselves from shoddy construction caused by corruption and poor safety enforcement. The Park administration was just a continuation of the status quo.
Here is where Ms. Kim continues on with another well known narrative about President Park’s missing seven hours during the Sewol Ferry Boat disaster:
South Korea is one of the most digitally connected nations in the world. The horror was witnessed live online by the entire nation, and those trapped teenagers were texting and video chatting their parents until their final seconds. In those desperate hours, however, Park was nowhere to be found, and no statement was issued by the Blue House until the president finally appeared in public, seven hours after the accident happened, looking dazed and clueless as she asked, “Why is it so hard to find the students if they are wearing life jackets?” Everyone had drowned hours ago.
Remember Ms. Kim wrote this back in December 2016 when the established narrative had already been established about President Park and the Sewol disaster. Media speculation said she was having botox treatments or even an affair during the missing seven hours. An investigation conducted by the Moon administration after taking office disclosed the timeline of events involving President Park.
By the time she found out about the accident that morning there was no chance to impact rescue operations. If a rescue was going to happen it had to happen by the first responders from the ROK Coast Guard. The Coast Guard office in Mokpo immediately sent a vessel to the accident site after receiving emergency phone calls from passengers. The vessel arrived at the scene before the sinking, but did not order the passengers to evacuate. An immediate evacuation and rescue by the Coast Guard would have saved many of the passengers.
This was incompetence by the ROK Coast Guard commander on the scene who was clearly unprepared to deal with such an accident and not something Park Geun-hye was going to be able to resolve in the few minutes she had from the Blue House. If people want to criticize her for lax government regulations that allowed the overweight ferry to operate and the poor disaster response by the Coast Guard I think that is fair. However, to claim she could have personally did something to save those people that morning, but instead hung out in her bedroom is completely unfair in my opinion.
What Park Geun-hye was guilty of was bad optics. Instead of making a statement that morning, she waited to receive reports on the situation and met with aides and her infamous friend Choi Soon-shil to determine the way ahead on the disaster. They decided to have Park visit the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters where she made her statement to the country that afternoon. This created the perception of the seven hour gap which her critics were happy to make things up to fill. Even after the investigation the optics still wern’t that good because it showed she received reports and met with aides in her bedroom and presidential residence instead of her office at the Blue House.
Ms. Kim continues about the Sewol tragedy:
When the Sewol ferry sank, Lee was one of the first reporters to arrive at the scene and was the last one to leave, more than a month later. As the mainstream media reported that there was a massive rescue team of hundreds of helicopters and ships, Lee reported that there were just two voluntary divers at the scene. A video clip of Lee, at a meeting of victims’ families, shouting at the other reporters for publishing lies and then breaking down in tears went viral.
In regards to poor coverage of the Sewol disaster it would not be surprising to me in the least if the ROK mainstream media was trying to minimize political damage to the Park administration. Now the complete opposite is happening with the Moon administration consolidating control of the major media outlets to give them favorable coverage instead.
The addictive real-time reporting of the Sewol disaster demonstrated the potential power of independent journalism. Now such journalists are increasingly turning to documentary reporting to engage their audience in an age where films can be made using just a phone. Lee has used this medium expertly. His first film, Diving Bell, about the Sewol tragedy was first released in theaters, then aired on YouTube, and then finally on TV on the eve of the parliament hearing on the Sewol ferry’s sinking. He will soon release a film called The President’s Seven Hours; he was the first to report the claim that during the seven-hour disappearance, Park was under anesthetic in the Blue House, getting a face-lifting, Botox-related injection treatment.
Here is another example of Ms. Kim repeating the established narrative at the time about the botox injections. The investigation launched by the Moon administration did not find that Park was having botox treatments that morning. The investigation did find that she was having botox treatments at other times by a doctor not employed by the Blue House. This doctor was later convicted for lying about the treatments and given a suspended sentence.
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As far as independent journalism, that is what Byun Hee-jae has been attempting to do with his reporting about the tablet PC and it got him sent to jail. Here is the passage where Ms. Kim talks more about JTBC TV:
Among the generally pro-government jongpyun, JTBC TV stands out as the only left-leaning network. The station, which first broke the tablet story and amplified information originated by Joo and Lee, has dominated ratings during the scandal. Since the Sewol tragedy, when it was seen as the only reliable voice among the cable networks, it has also played a critical role in invigorating Korean media.
JTBC may have done better coverage of the initial Sewol tragedy compared to the major media channels, but their later reporting on the tragedy, the tablet PC, as well as the THAAD issue we now know was either sensationalized or not true.
Here is how Ms. Kim concludes her article:
Of course, just as it is always a few bad seeds among politicians who end up taking their country onto a devastating path, it was only a handful of standout journalists who made a difference. But there’s reason to think that others will soon follow their successful example — and hopefully not only in South Korea.
Now we know that in South Korea that independent journalists that do not follow the established narrative will be jailed while in the United States under Donald Trump journalists can regularly publish ubiquitous “fake news” without the fear of being jailed.
In regards to the narrative against President Park, I have to wonder if she would have still been impeached if the public knew of the dubious nature of the tablet PC and the misinformation of the infamous seven hours? Maybe she still would have been impeached because Choi did have oversized influence in the Park administration and was corrupt, but the conveniently found tablet PC in my opinion seemed to be the key piece of evidence that finally caused the public to widely turn on Park.
I would love to see an American journalist like Suki Kim revisit the whole narrative against President Park. For example do they still believe JTBC’s claims about the tablet PC? The one journalist in South Korea who did vigorously report on it was thrown in jail. I would also like to see what American journalists think about the jailing of Byun Hee-jae. Do they support his work? Also does the American media agree with the Moon administration’s use of labor unions to protest and take control of the major media channels? What about the Druking online opinion rigging scandal linked to the Moon administration? I have yet to see any major media American journalist comment on any of this; maybe they just prefer to not challenge the established narrative?
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