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South Korea THE MEDIA
Modern Korean journalism began after the opening of Korea in
1876. The Korean press had a strong reformist and nationalistic
flavor from the beginning but faced efforts at political control
or outright censorship during most of the twentieth century. Many
Korean journalists established a tradition of remaining
independent. They were often critical of the government,
zealously protesting any attempts at press censorship. At
annexation in 1910, the Japanese governor general assumed direct
control of the press along with other public institutions.
Following the March First Movement in 1919, Japanese authorities
loosened their overt control over cultural activities and
permitted several Korean newspapers to function while maintaining
some behind-the-scenes direction over politically sensitive
topics. During the 1920s, Korean vernacular newspapers, such as
Tonga ilbo (East Asia Daily), and intellectual journals
such as Kaebyok (Creation), conducted running skirmishes
with Japanese censors. Japanese authorities prohibited sales of
individual issues on hundreds of occasions between 1926 and 1932.
Japan's war mobilization in the ensuing years ended any semblance
of autonomy for the Korean press; all Korean-language
publications were outlawed in 1941.
Following the period of the United States Army Military
Government in Korea (1945-48), which saw a burgeoning of
newspapers and periodicals of every description as well as
occasional censorship of the media, almost all subsequent South
Korean governments have at times attempted to control the media.
Syngman Rhee's government continued the military government's
Ordinance Number Eighty-Eight, which outlawed leftist newspapers.
Rhee also closed moderate newspapers and arrested reporters and
publishers on numerous occasions between 1948 and 1960. On taking
power in 1961, Park Chung Hee's Supreme Council for National
Reconstruction closed all but fifteen of Seoul's sixty-four daily
newspapers and refused to register a comparable percentage of the
country's news services, weeklies, and monthly publications while
using its own radio and news agencies to promote its official
line. The Park government also used the Press Ethics Commission
Law of 1964 and, after 1972, emergency decrees that penalized
criticism of the government to keep the media in line. In 1974
the government ordered a number of journalists fired and used the
KCIA to force Tonga ilbo to stop its reporting on popular
opposition to the Park government by intimidating the paper's
advertisers.
During the Park and Chun years, the government exercised
considerable control and surveillance over the media through the
comprehensive National Security Act. In late 1980, the Chun
government established more thorough control of the news media
than had existed in the South Korea since the Korean War.
Independent news agencies were absorbed into a single state-run
agency, numerous provincial newspapers were closed, central
newspapers were forbidden to station correspondents in provincial
cities, the Christian Broadcasting System network was forbidden
to provide news coverage, and two independent broadcasting
companies were absorbed into the state-run Korean Broadcasting
System (KBS). In addition, the Defense Security Command, then
commanded by Roh Tae Woo, and the Ministry of Culture and
Information ordered hundreds of South Korean journalists fired
and banned from newspaper writing or editing. The Basic Press Act
of December 1980 was the legal capstone of Chun's system of media
control and provided for censorship and control of newspapers,
periodicals, and broadcast media. It also set the professional
qualifications for journalists. Media censorship was coordinated
with intelligence officials, representatives of various
government agencies, and the presidential staff by the Office of
Public Information Policy within the Ministry of Culture and
Information using daily "reporting guidelines" (podo
chich'im) sent to newspaper editors. The guidelines dealt
exhaustively with questions of emphasis, topics to be covered or
avoided, the use of government press releases, and even the size
of headlines. Enforcement methods ranged from telephone calls to
editors to more serious forms of intimidation, including
interrogations and beatings by police. One former Ministry of
Culture and Information official told a National Assembly hearing
in 1988 that compliance during his tenure from 1980 to 1982
reached about 70 percent.
By the mid-1980s, censorship of print and broadcast media had
become one of the most widely and publicly criticized practices
of the Chun government. Even the government-controlled Yonhap
News Agency noted in 1989 that "TV companies, scarcely worse than
other media, were the main target of bitter public criticism for
their distorted reporting for the government in the early 1980s."
Editorials called for abolition of the Basic Press Act and
related practices, a bill was unsuccessfully introduced in the
National Assembly to the same end, and a public campaign to
withhold compulsory viewers' fees in protest against censorship
by the KBS network received widespread press attention. By the
summer of 1986, even the ruling party was responding to public
opinion.
The political liberalization of the late 1980s brought a
loosening of press restraints and a new generation of journalists
more willing to investigate sensitive subjects, such as the May
1980 Kwangju incident. Roh's eight-point declaration of June 29,
1987, provided for "a free press, including allowing newspapers
to base correspondents in provincial cities and withdrawing
security officials from newspaper offices." The South Korean
media began a rapid expansion. Seoul papers expanded their
coverage and resumed the practice of stationing correspondents in
provincial cities. Although temporarily still under the
management of a former Blue House press spokesman, the MBC
television network, a commercial network that had been under
control of the state-managed KBS since 1980, resumed independent
broadcasting. The number of radio broadcast stations grew from 74
in 1985 to 111 (including both AM and FM stations) by late 1988
and 125 by late 1989. The number of periodicals rose as the
government removed restrictions on the publishing industry
(see Transportation and Telecommunications
, ch. 3;
table 15, Appendix).
There also were qualitative changes in the South Korean
media. The Christian Broadcasting System, a radio network, again
began to broadcast news as well as religious programming in 1987.
In the same year, the government partially lifted a long-standing
ban on the works of North Korean artists and musicians, many of
whom were of South Korean origin. A newspaper run by dissident
journalists began publication in 1988. A number of other new
dailies also appeared in 1988. Many of the new weekly and monthly
periodicals bypassed the higher profits of the traditional
general circulation magazines to provide careful analyses of
political, economic, and national security affairs to smaller,
specialized audiences. Observers noted a dramatic increase in
press coverage of previously taboo subjects such as political-
military relations, factions within the military, the role of
security agencies in politics, and the activities of dissident
organizations. Opinion polls dealing with these and other
sensitive issues also began to appear with increasing regularity.
Journalists at several of the Seoul dailies organized trade
unions in late 1987 and early 1988 and began to press for
editorial autonomy and a greater role in newspaper management.
In 1989 South Korea's four largest dailies, Hanguk
ilbo, Chungang ilbo, Choson ilbo, and Tonga
ilbo, had a combined circulation of more than 6.5 million.
The antiestablishment Hangyore simmun (One Nation News),
had 450,000 readers--less than the major dailies or smaller
papers like Kyonghyang simmun or Soul simmun, but
larger than four more specialized economic dailies. All the major
dailies were privately owned, except for the government-
controlled Hanguk ilbo. Several other daily publications
had specialized readerships among sport fans and youth. Two
English-language newspapers, the government-subsidized Korea
Herald and the Korea Times, which was affiliated with
the independent Soul simmun, were widely read by foreign
embassies and businesses. A Chinese-language daily served South
Korea's small Chinese population
(see Population
, ch. 2).
The Yonhap News Agency provided domestic and foreign news to
government agencies, newspapers, and broadcasters. Yonhap also
provided news on South Korean developments in English by
computerized transmission via the Asia-Pacific News Network.
Additional links with world media were facilitated by four
satellite link stations. The International Broadcast Center
established in June 1988 served some 10,000 broadcasters for the
1988 Seoul Olympics. The government's KBS radio network broadcast
overseas in twelve languages. Two private radio networks, the
Asia Broadcasting Company and Far East Broadcasting Company,
served a wide regional audience that included the Soviet Far
East, China, and Japan.
The South Korean government also supported Naewoe Press,
which dealt solely with North Korean affairs. Originally a
propaganda vehicle that followed the government line on
unification policy issues, Naewoe Press became increasingly
objective and moderate in tone in the mid-1980s in interpreting
political, social, and economic developments in North Korea.
Vantage Point, an English-language publication of Naewoe
Press, provided in-depth studies of North Korean social,
economic, and political developments.
Except for two newspapers (one in Korean and one in English)
that the government owned or controlled and the state television
network, ownership of the media was for the most part distinct
from political or economic power. One exception was the
conservative daily, Chungang ilbo. Under the close
oversight of its owner, the late Samsung Group founder and
multimillionaire Yi Pyong-ch'ol, the paper and its affiliated TBC
television network generally supported the Park government during
the 1970s. Its relations with the government became strained
after 1980, however, when Chun Doo Hwan forced TBC to merge with
KBS. A journalists' strike at Chungang ilbo in 1989, in
one of many similar incidents at the major South Korean
newspapers, won even greater management and editorial
independence.
Most of South Korea's major newspapers derived their
financial support from advertising and from their affiliation
with major publishing houses. The Tonga Press, for example,
published not only the prestigious daily Tonga ilbo, but
also a variety of other periodicals, including a newspaper for
children, the general circulation monthly Sin tonga (New
East Asia), a women's magazine, and specialized reference books
and magazines for students. Throughout the postwar period,
Tonga ilbo has been noted for its opposition sympathies.
South Korea's principal antiestablishment newspaper,
Hangyore simmun, began publication in May 1988. It was
founded by dissident journalists who were purged by the
government in the early 1970s or in 1980; many of the paper's
reporters and editorial staff left positions on mainstream
newspapers to join the new venture. The structure and approach of
the paper reflected the founders' view that in the past the South
Korean news media had been too easily co-opted by the government.
The paper had a human rights department as well as a mass media
department to keep an eye on the government's press policy and to
critique the ideological and political biases of other
newspapers. The paper's nationalism and interest in national
reunification were symbolically represented in the logo, which
depicted Lake Ch'onji at the peak of Mount Paektu in North Korea;
in the exclusive use of the Korean alphabet; and in the type font
in which the paper's name was printed, which dated from a famous
Korean publication of the eighteenth century, before the country
became divided. The paper was printed horizontally, rather than
vertically like other Seoul dailies. In other innovations, the
Hangyore simmun relied on sales revenues, private
contributions, and the sale of stock, rather than advertising
from major corporations, in line with its claim to be "the first
newspaper in the world truly independent of political power and
large capital." The newspaper came under increasing government
pressures in 1989
(see Political Dynamics
, this ch.).
South Korea also had extensive and well-developed visual
media. The first Korean film was produced in 1919, and cinemas
subsequently were built in the larger cities. The result of the
spread of television sets and radios was the dissemination of a
homogenized popular culture and the impingement of urban values
on rural communities.
Data as of June 1990
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