Tag: media

ROK Heads may remember that Park Sang-hak who leads the defector group, Fighters for a Free North Korea has been subject to assassination attempts before by North Korea. The ROK media appears eager to help North Korea finish the job.

The South Korean left’s war on conservative media continues, but credit to the New York Times for taking notice of what is going on in South Korea:

South Korea announced a sweeping crackdown on “fake news” on Tuesday, calling it “a destroyer of democracy.” Conservative critics of the government, however, cried foul, accusing it of trying to impede freedom of speech.

Speaking at a cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Lee Nak-yon said that fake news had spread so widely in South Korea that it was stymying not only citizens’ privacy but also the country’s national security and foreign policies, including its relations with North Korea.

Mr. Lee did not offer examples. But he was furious last week after he visited Vietnam for the state funeral for its president, Tran Dai Quang. While in Hanoi, he visited the stilt house of Ho Chi Minh and wrote in the visitors’ book at the compound that he felt “humble” before the “great” Vietnamese leader. South Korea fought against his Communist forces alongside the Americans during the Vietnam War.

When the photograph of Mr. Lee’s tribute was reported in South Korea, conservative critics called him a “commie” on social media.  [New York Times]

So of course the Prime Minister has declared war on fake news and wants a new law to regulate the news:

Mr. Lee encouraged government agencies to report fake news to the law enforcement authorities for investigation. He also called for a new law regulating such information, which some lawmakers in his Democratic Party had already been advocating.

Opposition lawmakers denounced the government’s move as an attempt to silence criticism, especially YouTube videos used by conservative critics to attack the progressive government of President Moon Jae-in, whom they often call a North Korean stooge. Progressives have long criticized those channels as a main source of inaccurate and unfair information.

“They can already punish distribution of false information under the existing laws,” Park Dae-chul, a legislator affiliated with the conservative opposition Liberty Korea Party, said in a statement. “I cannot help suspecting that this is an attempt to crack down on right-wing podcasts. They want to shut down the voices the government doesn’t want to hear.”

ROK Drop readers may recall how the Korean left has already taken over control of most of the mainstream media in the country through union violence and those they don’t control they have threatened with legal action.  They have even had conservative journalists arrested for libel.

The Moon administration is taking these actions because they need to change the South Korean public’s opinion of North Korea and Kim Jong-un.  Conservative critics who keep bringing up North Korea’s poor human rights record, past atrocities, terrorism, and other inconvenient truths have to be silenced to continue to shape pro-North public messaging.

The Moon administration’s ultimate goal is a confederation with North Korea and he can’t realize that without the support of the South Korean public.

Considering the media controls the Moon administration has put on the press in South Korea why is anyone surprised by this?:

Foreign reporters based in Seoul are upset that they were not invited to Pyongyang to cover the three-day inter-Korean summit from Tuesday to Thursday.

“Foreign media should be there because it is an international event surrounding the biggest foreign policy concern of the U.S.,” NK News managing director Chad O’Carroll told The Korea Times, Wednesday.

He has made five times of trips to the North since 2010.

“South Korean media were welcomed en masse to Singapore and hundreds of South Korean journalists went, because that issue was as much of concern to Seoul as the inter-Korean summit is to foreigners,” he said.

Although a journalist with South Korea’s English media was included in the media delegation to Pyongyang, O’Carroll said there was still need to invite foreign reporters to provide different perspectives to global audiences.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but Mr. O’Carroll is a smart guy and I am sure he understands the Kim regime and the Moon administration do not want different perspectives.  They planned a carefully crafted narrative for the Inter-Korean Summit and allowing foreign reporters was something that could potentially chip away at the narrative they created.

What I find interesting about this is that JTBC ran a fake news story that ultimately led to the impeachment of the South Korean president with no consequences; TV Chosun airs a far less significant fake news story and they are having legal action taken against them:

A controversial false report by the TV Chosun network claiming North Korea demanded US$10,000 for coverage of the dismantlement of its Punggye Village nuclear test site was subsequent to heavy disciplinary action in the form of “legal measures” by the Korea Communications Standards Commission (KCSC) broadcasting subcommittee for violation of objectivity. TV Chosun is a conservative network that began broadcasting under Chosun Ilbo on Dec. 1, 2011.In a meeting convened on June 21, the subcommittee heard opinions and accounts from TV Chosun information center deputy chief Jeong Seok-yeong and political desk chief Kang Sang-gu before reaching a majority decision to refer the matter to the KCSC plenary session.

On May 19, TV Chosun aired an “exclusive” on “News 7” claiming North Korea had demanded US$10,000 per person from US journalists for coverage of the dismantlement of the nuclear test site at Punggye Village.In his appearance before the subcommittee that day, Kang said that he himself had been the segment’s writer rather than Eom Seong-seop, the journalist who delivered the report.“I basically wrote the piece,”

Kang said.When asked by review committee members if TV Chosun had different journalists investigating stories, writing reports, and reading reports, Kang replied, “There are such cases in the interest of protecting sources.”TV Chosun claimed the report was based on interviews with two US journalists and North Korean officials. While it did not disclose the names of the US reporters, it described them as “reliable journalists.” But neither of them was actually present for coverage at Punggye Village. South Korean and overseas new outlets confirmed that no such money had been paid by members of the foreign press present at the dismantlement, including CNN’s Will Ripley.  [Hankyoreh]

You can read more a the link, but TV Chosun is really the only conservative TV news station left in South Korea since the Moon administration used labor unions and violence to consolidate control over the other major news networks.  This is clearly a shot across the bow by the ROK government to get them to moderate their coverage.

The cynic in me though does wonder if TV Chosun was setup or not by whoever gave them the information about the payments to North Korea?

Supposedly peace in our time is about to break out on the Korean peninsula with the announcement of a US-DPRK summit, but you would not know that if you only read the North Korean media:

Even after a historic announcement that U.S. President Donald Trump will meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un for the first time as a sitting president, Pyongyang continued Saturday to denounce the U.S. for its sanctions and vowed never to bow to the pressure.

In an opinion piece attributed to an individual writer, North Korea’s state newspaper Rodong Sinmun said Saturday that the regime won’t bow to “military power, sanctions or blockade.”

“We won’t let Americans determine good and evil according to their own ruler and trample upon justice and truth,” it argued.

It denounced the latest sanctions and secondary boycott by the U.S. and said they violated international law and infringed on sovereignty. It also called those disciplinary actions “very dangerous” and said they “might provoke a war.”

Neither the paper nor other North Korean media mentioned that South Korean envoys extended an invitation from Kim Jong-un to President Trump Thursday (local time) in Washington to meet to discuss the regime’s nuclear weapons programs and that Trump accepted it.  [Yonhap]

This likely means that the state controlled media in North Korea will continue to take a hardline against the US until it is clear that the upcoming summit is going to lead to the concessions they want.

I guess these South Korean journalists forgot they are in a country without freedom of the press:

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.