Depending on Foreign News Media

The foreign correspondents stationed in Seoul report on what’s going on in Korea and the rest of Asia. Then, Korean reporters stationed overseas pick up the reports and send them back to their newspapers in Seoul where they are translated into Korean and published as though they were big news.

I have always wondered why the Korean press keeps undertaking this curious and senseless practice.

After all, what the foreign press reports is usually what Korean reporters already know. They have, in all likelihood, reported the stories already. Indeed, chances are the foreign correspondents based their stories on information they got from local press reports in the first place.

That is why I think foreign press reports on Korea in most cases are not news. And yet, they attract attention here as though the mere fact that the foreign press had reported about this or that development in Korea is significant in itself.

It is a different story, of course, if the foreign correspondents have written analyses or commentaries on what has taken place in Korea. If they have a unique, foreign point of view or insight that we should take note of, they deserved to be picked up, translated correctly and published as food for thought, if nothing else.

But if they are straight news stories, they can safely be ignored, even if they are published in the so-called authoritative or influential papers like the New York Times, the Times of London, and Le Monde, for instance.

Even with this kind of article, we should be wary and discriminating because each and every member of the foreign press has its own editorial policy or ideological slant so that you cannot call every foreign report strictly objective, fair or balanced. We should be able to take this aspect into consideration when we read them.

What’s more difficult to understand is the instances where vernacular newspapers relay foreign reports that are based on information provided by South Korean sources. Every time I run into such reports, I wonder why Korean newspapers couldn’t go to the same Korean sources and ask the same questions and publish their own versions.

Is it so difficult for the Korean press to obtain news from a Korean source so that they have to depend on the foreign press? Or are the Korean newspapers—and radio and television stations, for that matter—simply too lazy to dig information out for themselves?
Or, perhaps, they are afraid of taking responsibility for publishing certain news because of libel or a breach of national security.

In this connection, I have often noticed that major Japanese newspapers and television channels beat the Korean press in reporting on what’s happening in that secretive society, called North Korea, or on inter-Korean developments. Often, the Japanese reports were based on information given to them by South Korean officials or sources that “preferred to remain anonymous.”

It is true that in the old days when the Seoul government was tightly controlled by the administrations headed by army-generals-turned presidents, news sources—often government officials—were said to have been extremely reluctant to disclose any sensitive information to the domestic press for fear they might be asked to take responsibility later. In other words, they were anxious to save their necks.

That is why they probably preferred to let a select foreign newspaper float a morsel of highly sensitive information to see what the world public reaction would be before making the same news available to others, including the Korean press.

But now South Korea has been democratized to a great extent. The Korean press is free to collect and disseminate almost “all the news that’s fit to print.” There is no reason for vernacular papers to depend on foreign reports on Korea any more.

But as I said, watching foreign press reports on Korea seems to persist among the Korean press including the mass-circulation dailies. Foreign press reports have become the unquestionable standard by which Korean newspapers seem to measure the value of news.

Recently, for instance, the New York Times reported on Baengnyoendo island in the West Sea near the Northern Limit Line (NLL), the maritime border between South and North Korea. It was a good and timely piece that introduced the life of the fishermen and other residents amid rising military tension between the South and North.

Noting that many Korean newspapers used that story prominently, I wondered why they had to rely on the New York Times for a story like that. After all, they could have sent their own reporters to the island and report on their fellow South Koreans from their own Korean point of view.

The paucity of ideas and the lack of an enterprising, even aggressive, spirit on the part of Korean newspaper editors and reporters are appalling. In addition, their old habit of putting too much value on foreign press reports is apparently dying hard. It is about time, however, to outgrow our dependency on foreign views and start nurturing self-confidence and relying on our own judgment.
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