Last updated on August 16, 2024
(Published : Feb 17, 2015 – 16:47)
Every day, Twitter brings surprises, but a tweet about Saenuri Party Chairperson Kim Moo-sung’s press conference for foreign journalists on Feb. 9 grabbed my attention more than others. In his opening statement, Mr. Kim said, “The world sees South Korea through your eyes. The more good news reported by you, the better the image of our country and the higher the national status.” He made a direct plea to foreign journalists to write good news about Korea in the hope of promoting Korea’s national interests.
The statement revealed the continuing problem that Korea has in dealing with the outside world: Control over the message. In this second decade of the 21st century, messages are very hard to control, as the recently jailed Korean Air “nut rage” protagonist Cho Hyun-ah recently found out. Information is being created and distributed at a speed unimaginable even 10 years ago.
What used to be private and unknown is now instantly public knowledge. CCTV cameras are everywhere. Google and Facebook have turned privacy into a quaint idea that older generations talk about in the past tense. The message, whatever it is, cannot be controlled.
The message cannot be controlled, but it can be formed through the creation and distribution of content. Failed U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney created a message when he said 47 percent of people who pay no federal income tax would vote for President Barack Obama no matter what.
A waiter recorded the message and made it public, and it went viral. Had Romney stuck to his regular stump speech, the waiter’s recording might have not have attracted much attention. Romney was the content creator and the waiter the content distributor.
Journalists, both Korean and foreign, are both creators and distributors. Their job is to look for news. Positive news about the Korean economy, for example, will produce the good news that Kim Moo-sung advocates.
Nominating a flawed candidate, such as Lee Wan-koo, for prime minister will produce bad news. Failing to maintain the neutrality of the National Intelligence Service during a presidential election will produce bad news. A major disaster like the sinking of the Sewol ferry last year will produce bad news for an extended period.
Korean and foreign journalists are not free of bias. Deciding what is news requires human judgment which, however objective, also comes from subjective individual values and experience. In reporting on allegations that Lee Wan-koo and his son dodged military service, Korean journalists may focus on this issue more than foreign reporters because of its importance in Korean society.
Social trends, such as plastic surgery, may be of more interest to foreign journalists who come from places where plastic surgery is not common. Other times, Korean and foreign journalists agree, as in the case of Cho Hyun-ah’s abusive behavior, and they report the same story widely.
Instead of asking foreign journalists to report only good news from Korea, politicians should focus on the root cause of much of the bad news: corruption and contempt for the law among the elite.
On the 2014 Corruption Perceptions Index, a respected measure of global corruption, Korea ranked 43rd out of 175 countries surveyed, significantly lower than Singapore (seventh), Japan (15th) and Hong Kong (17th). Taiwan ranked 35th. This contrasts with Korea’s high rank of 15th on the important Human Development Index in 2014.
Foreign journalists who come from countries with fewer scandals than Korea will naturally view repeated and flagrant disregard for the law among the elite as newsworthy. Korean journalists report on such happenings through the lens of class entitlement, guaranteeing big play for stories of elite corruption.
What can be done? Dealing with corruption is a long process that involves cycles of shock and plenty of bad news. Finding and punishing lawbreakers is an obvious first step. From there, legal and institutional reforms are needed to make it more difficult for the same crimes to be repeated. Korea has so far focused on enforcement, and institutional reform has lagged behind.
The recently proposed Conglomerates Ethical Management Special Law is an important step forward. The bill proposes banning chaebol owner families from working in their companies for at least five years if convicted of a crime. Further reforms need to move toward “defeudalizing” the powerful chaebol and opening the economy. Over time, substantive reforms that achieve results will generate good news and Korea’s image will improve.