I guess we will see how the South Korea government responds to this demand in order to ensure North Korean participation during the upcoming Winter Olympics:
The North Korean journalists union on Monday called on South Korea to “hold tight control” of its conservative media, warning that negative reports could scupper ongoing DPRK-ROK dialogue.
The commentary, carried by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), is written under the name of Kim Chol Guk, department director of the Central Committee of the Journalists Union of Korea.
Kim said South Korea’s conservative media had “astounded the world” by publishing “disgusting slander which deride and insult the sincerity of the fellow countrymen.”
The South Korean government must place controls over conservative media and should be aware that they “may mess up the great event of the nation,” his article said.
“Tongue may bring calamity and miswritten pen may become a sword beheading oneself,” an English language version of the article reads.
“The South Korean authorities may find the wedding ceremony turning into a mourning ceremony if they fail to hold tight control of media and of their own tongue.”
Conservative South Korean outlets have allegedly described the Pyongyang’s “proposal and sincere efforts for inter-Korean talks as double-dealing tactics,” the article said, without specifying which outlets it was referring to.
“They even admonished the authorities to be vigilant against ‘the north’s trick to impair the South Korea-U.S. alliance.’” [NK News]
I guess these South Korean journalists forgot they are in a country without freedom of the press:
A South Korean journalist lies on the ground after being beaten by a group of Chinese security guards under the leadership of the Chinese police at a South Korean trade fair attended by South Korean President Moon Jae-in in Beijing on Dec. 14, 2017. (Yonhap)
More than a dozen Chinese security guards beat and injured a South Korean photojournalist who was covering a business function attended by South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Thursday hours before his summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
The incident occurred at a convention center in Beijing where a trade fair was held involving some 200 South Korean firms and 500 prospective Chinese buyers. Moon is currently on a four-day state visit to China that began Wednesday.
A group of 14 South Korean journalists was covering the event when the Chinese guards blocked them from following the president who was then visiting various booths of South Korean firms at the fair, according to pool reports.
The journalists protested the blockage and one of them, a photojournalist, was taken outside of the venue by some 15 Chinese security guards.
The journalist took a severe beating while being completely surrounded by the guards despite strong protests from his colleagues and South Korean officials, including those from the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae.
The journalist was taken to a hospital after Moon’s medical staff examined him and said he required intensive treatment, according to Cheong Wa Dae pool reports. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but I doubt anything is going to happen to these security guards. The Chinese government had mobs go and beat down Koreans in the streets of Seoul before and nothing happened to them. They were instead considered national heroes.
I would not be surprised if the assault was deliberate to send a message to South Korean journalists which the Chinese state run media has been criticizing over their coverage of President Moon’s visit to China.
Here is another example of the equivalency many journalists try to make between Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump:
People watch President Trump on TV at a railway station in Seoul on Wednesday.
I think if I really think about it, I’m a little concerned. But it’s also in the sense that I’m concerned about how easily accessible nuclear weapons are increasingly in this world. And it’s not just North Korea. It’s the United States, it’s Russia, it’s all these different countries.
There’s another layer of hypocrisy in the way we report about North Korea. Like, the United States owns nuclear weapons, but why is North Korea in the axis of evil that doesn’t get to because it’s supposed to be the less rational one? I’m just generally afraid of nuclear weapons in general. I’m just as afraid of Trump owning nuclear weapons as Kim Jong Un owning one. [VOX]
You can read more of the interview at the link, but does this South Korean journalist believe Japan should get nuclear weapons because everyone should have the right to pursue them? That is the obvious logic being advocated for here.
Plus in my opinion anyone who thinks President Trump is just going to wake up one day and authorize a nuclear weapons strike should not be taken seriously. The same can be said for anyone who thinks Kim Jong-un is just going to wake up one day and launch a nuclear weapons strike as well.
I don’t think long time Korea watcher are surprised by this kind of media collusion with Samsung:
“Dear respected Mr. Chang Choong-ki! …. I have finally mustered the courage to send you this text message, after hesitating again and again. My son XXX applied to the XXX department of Samsung Electronics…. His application number is 1XXXXXXX, and he graduated from XXX University with a degree in electrical engineering….”
The sender of the text is an anonymous journalist from CBS, a major Christian broadcaster in South Korea. He is essentially asking one of the most powerful men in Samsung Group to help his son get a job.
“I am always grateful to you,” the journalist wrote.
Chang Choong-ki is the former vice head of Samsung Group’s now-defunct Future Strategy Office, a central but opaque organ in the Samsung machine that sponsored media, dealt with government relations, and oversaw key business decisions across the conglomerate’s 70+ affiliates. Chang is also one of the key figures in the country’s biggest political scandal in recent memory, the so-called “Park Geun-hye/Choi Soon-sil Gate.”
The CBS journalist’s text message is one of many recovered from Chang Choong-ki’s phone by SisaIN, a South Korean magazine. This week, SisaIN released an exclusive by Joo Jin-woo, an investigative reporter well-known for tackling sensitive topics (even taboo, in some outlets) like Samsung and heads of state.
According to Joo, Chang had corresponded with a wide network of authorities in different sectors: officials in the presidential Blue House, the National Intelligence Service (South Korea’s spy agency), prosecutors, journalists, and more.
In one text, Im Chae-jin, a former head of South Korea’s Prosecution Service, mentioned his son-in-law, an employee at a Samsung factory in Suwon: “Can you help my [son-in-law] XXX be dispatched to India?” Im emphasized that his daughter also wanted the transfer.
In another, an anonymous journalist from major daily Munhwa Ilbo asked Chang to increase the amount of sponsorship for the newspaper. “We’ll reward you with good articles,” the anonymous reporter wrote. [Korea Expose]
I recommend reading the whole thing at the link, but media collusion with not only industry, but political parties is something that is not only a problem in South Korea, but as the last election cycle showed, in the United States as well.
ROK Drop favorite Andrew Salmon has an article in the Korea Times about the upcoming release of a documentary about the dog meat industry in Korea:
On Saturday evening, I attended a film screening at a coffee shop arranged by the Seoul branch of the Asian-American Journalists’ Association. The location was comfortable and the company convivial, but the film was not your typical Saturday night bubble-gum viewing. In fact, it was harrowing.
The film was a documentary covering Korea’s dog-meat trade from all angles. Dog farmers – whose demeanors ranged from coolly professional to savagely inhumane – showed their facilities, activities and doomed charges. A pusillanimous National Assembly adviser prattled about the threat to the “national image” if the trade were legalized. An impotent local official accompanied animal rights activists on an inspection visit to a dog farm, where he was turned away at the gate and ended up apologizing to the farmer. Consumers and chefs discussed canine cuisine.
Most traumatically, the documentary captured footage of diseased, wounded dogs in cages; dead puppies being hurled into the trash; livestock slaughtered with blunt instrument strikes to the skull; and packs of dogs crammed into tiny cages for transport from Jeju to mainland markets.
These sequences are benchmarks for under-cover filmmaking. If we accept Sir Max Hastings’ definition of a journalist’s role (“Cause trouble!”), this was fine journalism. It is a challenging film that deserves to be widely viewed and debated. It wrought behavioral change in me: I have eaten dog meat in the past, but after watching this film, won’t again. (Though, having watched it, I reached the opposite conclusion of the animal-rights activists who helped make the film: I am convinced that the sector needs to be fully legalized, so related slaughter and butchery can be properly regulated.) [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but the major point Mr. Salmon makes in his article is that this documentary was not funded by any major news network, but instead crowd sourcing. I don’t know if crowd sourcing is the answer to better journalism in this era of fake news?
I think this high school student probably just scored himself an A in his journalism class after landing an interview with Defense Secretary Mattis:
A US high school student has scored an exclusive interview with Pentagon chief Jim Mattis after an aide of President Donald Trump inadvertently exposed the defense secretary’s cell phone number.
The Washington Post in May ran a photo of Trump and his bodyguard Keith Schiller walking outside the White House, with Schiller clutching a bunch of papers.
Sharp-eyed readers noticed that atop the papers was a yellow sticky note that said “Jim, Mad Dog, Mattis” along with a phone number.
Retired four-star Marine general Mattis has been nicknamed “Mad Dog” by some in the media and by troops that served under him.
The newspaper quickly took the photo down but not before Teddy Fischer, a sophomore (about 16 years old) from Mercer Island High School saw the number and called Mattis with an interview request.
“I called it to see if it was him, because I was pretty curious if this is actually his number or is it kind of a joke,” Fischer told the King 5 local news channel in his home state of Washington.
He didn’t leave a message but went on to text an interview request.
To his surprise, Mattis called back and agreed to schedule an interview, which ultimately would last for about 45 minutes. [AFP]
For those that think war with North Korea is imminent I think this passage from Secretary Mattis during the interview is quite telling:
“The most important thing is, if you have to go to war, then do everything you can not to go to war if at all possible,” the defense secretary added. “Then you’ve got to get the political end state right or you’ll never figure out how to end it successfully.”
Mattis cited the 1991 Desert Storm campaign against Iraq as an exception to the US’s half-century pattern of entering conflicts without a planned political end state. In that conflict, Mattis says, President George H.W. Bush formed a coalition and pushed Iraqi forces out of Kuwait, stopping short of invading Iraq, despite calls to do so.
“We went in with more troops than we needed and we ended it quickly, because he had the political end state right,” Mattis said. [Business Insider]
I don’t think anyone can make the case yet that all options to deal with the North Korean threat have been exhausted. Based on Secretary Mattis’ statement I don’t think he is going to be an advocate of launching any strike on North Korea until all options are exhausted.
The full interview with Mattis can be read at the high school newspaper’s website. The student I thought did a really good job because the interview was actually quite interesting and worth taking the time to read.
I don’t think we will see much fake news before the election because the Korean left does not have any serious challengers to the Presidency since they took out Ban Ki-moon with arguably fake news already:
Acting President and Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn speaks during a meeting of related ministers on preparation for the May 9 presidential election at the central government complex in Seoul on March 27, 2017. (Yonhap)
Acting President and Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn on Monday called for a stern crackdown on fake news and other election crimes with the presidential election 43 days away.
During a meeting of related ministers on preparation for the May 9 election day, Hwang also instructed the government to employ a “zero-tolerance” principle against any civil servants violating their obligation to remain politically neutral.
“We have to come up with extraordinary measures including a special task force to tackle fake news and malicious propaganda which are election crimes that could inflict great damages (on victims),” Hwang said. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but could you imagine if there was a fake news crackdown in the US? It has gotten so bad now that the US President responds to fake news with his own fake news so the media stops talking about the other fake news.
Could you imagine how many lawsuits the Trump administration would have against the American media if libel laws in the US were similar to South Korea?:
President Park Geun-hye decided to sue the JoongAng Ilbo and its source from the independent counsel team on charges of defamation over a report that she ordered the government to create a blacklist of artists critical of her administration to control public sentiment in the aftermath of the Sewol ferry’s sinking in 2014.
Hwang Seong-wook, a lawyer of Park in her impeachment trial, said Saturday that she never ordered anyone to make the so-called blacklist of artists and cultural figures.
In his text message to reporters, Hwang also said Park decided to file criminal and civil suits against journalists and other members of the JoongAng Ilbo for defaming her with its report.
The president is also suing a member of the independent counsel who was quoted in the report as a source.
“Those who frequently make false reports under the shadow of anonymity must stop manipulating the press,” Hwang said. “We also urge the press to report only confirmed, objective facts.”
On the front page of Saturday’s edition, the JoongAng Ilbo, an affiliate of the Korea JoongAng Daily, published an exclusive report saying that Park was behind the blacklist scandal.
The report said independent counsel Park Young-soo and his team have so far concluded that the creation of the list started about one month after the tragic ferry accident, which led to the death of 306 people due to the delayed government rescue efforts. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/56158001/GettyImages_827994056.0.jpg?resize=640%2C427&ssl=1)
.jpg?resize=150%2C179)
