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| Rep. Noh Woong-rae, center, the leader of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea's taskforce team for media reform, talks to reporters after a meeting at the National Assembly, Tuesday. Noh said they decided to seek the revision of a law to force media to pay punitive damages for victims of "fake news." Yonhap |
By Jung Da-min
The ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) is planning to revise a law within the National Assembly's February session aimed at requiring media to pay punitive damages for spreading "fake news". While the DPK said that punishment is needed to prevent the distortion of information and the spread of fake news by not only conventional media, but also portal sites and YouTube, conservative critics raised concerns that the law could be used to tame the media in the name of cracking down on fake news.
The DPK's askforce team said, Tuesday, that it would revise the law to apply punitive damages to newspapers, TV broadcasters, portal site operators, YouTubers and other one-person media users for spreading false information.
Before the team's decision, Rep. Yoon Young-chan of the party proposed a revised bill to have YouTubers, other one-person media users and portal site operators to pay up to three times the damages caused by their fake news to the victims. The team also decided that conventional media, such as newspaper and TV, should also be subject to such punishment if they spread fake news.
"When we were first discussing the bill, our primary intention was to target YouTubers or SNS users, as fake news was most abundant on such social media platforms. But we did not exclude the traditional media from the target of punishment," Rep. Noh Woong-rae, leader of the taskforce, said at the National Assembly.
"For portals, they play a major role in providing news here, accounting for 70 to 80 percent of the news supplied to people. But they also publish fake news, including news with no value that only seeks to make money. We need to create a related law that can regulate portals to remove these trashy articles."
Critics said, however, that the ruling DPK's plan could be seen as an attempt to control media and goes against democratic values of freedom of expression.
Emergency committee chief Kim Chong-in, of the main opposition People Power Party, said at the committee's meeting at the National Assembly, Monday, that the DPK was trying to tame the media to produce news favorable to the Moon Jae-in government.
"The DPK's plan to regulate fake news on the Internet is highly likely an attempt to tame the media to make them follow the government's reporting guidelines," Kim said. "Some people actually think that the fake news coming from the government is more serious."
Regarding criticism that the bill undermines the democratic values of freedom of expression, the DPK's Rep. Noh said that whether or not to punish media for spreading fake news will be a decision judged by the courts, after it considers the maliciousness and willfulness of each spreader. Rep. Noh stated that he does not believe that such punishment would be excessive.
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