Raids, fines and digging through underwear drawers: Korean president’s war on ‘fake news’
Max Kim April 8, 2024
When police showed up
last year
at Im Hyun-jus home in Seoul with a search warrant,
last year,
the 43-year-old journalist watched in disbelief as they examined old notebooks, rifled through her bedroom and confiscated her phone and laptop.
An officer explained that she was under investigation for
having violating South Koreas privacy laws, because she had given giving
a colleague leaked documents about the justice minister, including personal records from his confirmation hearing.
Frankly, I was angry, Im wrote
later
in an essay. What was the reason for coming into my home where my family lives, humiliating me by digging through my underwear drawer?
Many saw the raid as part of the governments ongoing attack on her employer, the public broadcaster MBC, over what President Yoon Suk Yeol routinely terms fake news.
Capitalizing on
growingextreme
mistrust in the media, Yoon has made combating disinformation a centerpiece of his agenda. But free press advocates say his vow to keep reporters honest is a pretext to intimidate his critics.
His
lawmakers from his conservative People Power Party and officials in his
administration have filed at least 25 criminal complaints against journalists and media organizations over the last two years
, on
allegations include defamation
andto
stalking and authorities have raided at least six newsrooms or homes of reporters.
At least one journalist has been indicted on defamation charges for a story about the justice minister that turned out to have major inaccuracies.
That case, like most of the others, has Most of these cases have
yet to go to trial
, and in some, police have declined to press charges
.
The only explanation I can think of for why I was raided is that the administration is trying to scare us into submission, Im said.
That is not to say that
isnt a problem in South Korea.
As in the United States and other countries, many
in South Koreahere
are shunning traditional news sources. A recent poll found that 53% of South Koreans get news through YouTube, which has become a
hotbed ofseedbedfor
political extremism and conspiracy theories.
Because the public is increasingly rejecting neutral and fair reporting, those who are trying to do this kind of high-quality journalism are losing ground, said Shim Seog-tae, a journalism professor at Semyung University.
That became clear during the 2022 presidential election, which featured press coverage that strained the boundaries of journalistic impartiality and rigor. In the run-up to the vote, conservative newspapers spread claims later prove
dn
to be false that Yoons opponent had received bribes from a local criminal organization.
Then the investigative outlet Newstapa ran a story that suggested Yoon had helped bury a banking and real estate scandal when he was a prosecutor
a . The
report
that was later found to havewas later revealed to have sufferedfrom
significant journalistic defects, including
misleading editing of a transcript and
an undisclosed financial relationship between the stringer and his source
and misleading editing of the transcript
.
After Yoon took power his first time in elected office prosecutors created a
n election conspiracy
task force
and raidedtargeting alleged election conspiracies, raiding
the newsrooms of Newstapa and JTBC, an outlet that cited the report, as well as the homes of two journalists.
A breaking point in Yoons relationship with the press came
when a team from MBC followed him to New York
in
New York in
September
of
2022,
duringfor
a conference for
a the
Global Fund, a
n international
financing body created to fight HIV and other diseases in developing countries.
Unaware that his
press pool
microphone was on, Yoon appeared to tell his aides: Its going to be embarrassing for Biden if those pricks at the National Assembly dont approve this bill.
An
MBC report
edsaid
that he was referring to the U.S. Congress and the fact that it would have to approve Bidens $6-million pledge to the fund. But Yoons administration said that journalists had misheard the word “Biden” and that Yoon was talking about the South Korean National Assembly.
Yoon fumed that the report threatened national security and accused the broadcaster of maliciously using fake news to drive a wedge in U.S.-South Korea relations.
His office proceeded to ban MBC from the presidential plane on a trip to Southeast Asia. More significant
ly
, the broadcaster has been subject to investigations by the Labor Ministry and the National Tax Service, while the Korea Communications Standards Commission
, a broadcast regulator,
has fined
itMBC
at least three times on disinformation grounds. Viewed by many as retaliatory, two of the
se
fines have been suspended in court.
The head of the commission, appointed by Yoon, has expanded its remit from illegal online content like gambling or pornography to the murkier realm of “fake news.” The highly controversial move has included experiments in attaching labels to online
news
stories indicating when they are under review for disinformation.
Shim, the journalism professor, noted that Yoon
, a conservative,
is not the first president to crack down on the press. Under his liberal predecessor, Moon Jae-in, the
then-
ruling party attempted to pass a law that would have subjected journalists to punitive damage claims
for their work
.
The effort failed after running into conservative opposition.
Whats new is the scale of the offensive.
If previous administrations attempted to control the media with surgical precision, the Yoon administration is hacking away with an ax,
Shim he
said. The entire government has been mobilized to this end.
In January, the court ordered MBC to comply with a demand from the foreign ministry that the broadcaster issue a correction to its reporting on the hot-mic incident, drawing on expert analysis
noting of the recording
that
determined
it was unclear whether Yoon had uttered the word Biden. MBC has appealed the ruling.
I dont think technical analyses are necessarily the answer in these situations, said Lee Ki-ju, 45, one of the journalists behind the story. I stand by our reporting and think it was well within the realm of common sense and standard journalistic practice.
Lawmakers also filed defamation complaints against Lee and three other MBC journalists. In addition, Lee is being investigated for obstruction of official proceedings on the basis that the report compromised the presidents diplomatic efforts.
Ive received several summons from the police, but Ive been refusing to attend, because I think its unjust,
said
Lee
,said. Lee,
who has been the target of an online death threat for publicly clashing with the president
, said the governments portrayals of the media as an enemy of the state has created an atmosphere in which journalists fear for their safety
.
At a closed-door meeting with a group of reporters last month, Hwang Sang-moo, a senior presidential secretary for civil and social affairs, said, Listen up, MBC before recounting an infamous story
from 1988
about a journalist who was stabbed in the thigh
by soldiers
with a sashimi knife
by soldiers
after writing a piece critical of the military
in 1988
.
Hwang, a former journalist, claimed he was joking but resigned a week later.
Government officials in this day and age wouldnt go that far themselves, but I was worried that a fanatical supporter might interpret it as a message to carry out an attack, Lee said.
MBCs union has decried the governments crackdown as excessive investigations that unfairly target the broadcaster.
Legal experts have warned that government attempts to police the truthfulness of news reports overstep
s
judicial processes and endanger
s
freedom of expression, a constitutional right that has existed since 1948 and weathered decades of military dictatorships.
Citing the undermining of freedom of expression, Swedish watchdog V-Dem Institute wrote
this year
in its annual “Democracy Report” that South Korea
iswas
in an episode of autocratization. In the institutes democracy index, South Koreas ranking has dropped from 28th to 47th
place
.
At the third Summit for Democracy a Biden-led global effort to counter growing global authoritarianism, hosted
last month
in Seoul
last month
Yoon held firm.
Accusing certain actors and groups of undermining democracy with
their
lies, he put forward his solution: legal investigations and harsher punishments.
