Trouble at Arirang TV

• Published Feb 10, 2016 4:28 PM KST
• Updated Feb 10, 2016 4:28 PM KST

By John Burton

With the sudden resignation of the head of Arirang TV, President Park Geun-hye has the opportunity to reverse the decline of Korea’s state-run international broadcaster that has happened under her watch.

I have closely followed developments at Arirang TV since I worked there four years ago. At the time, I was asked by Sohn Jie-ae, then the Arirang TV CEO, to serve as a newsroom editor as she sought to raise reporting standards.

I have known Sohn since 1992, when I came to Korea as correspondent for the Financial Times, and she was working for The New York Times and later as Seoul correspondent for CNN. She went on to serve as foreign media spokeswoman for the 2010 G-20 Summit and then the Blue House under President Lee Myung-bak before being appointed as head of Arirang TV. She was the first Arirang TV CEO to have international broadcasting experience and had the vision of turning the channel into an outlet that would rival regional peers such as Singapore’s Channel News Asia and the global services ofJapan’s NHK and China’s CCTV.

I was attracted by the offer despite the low pay (Arirang TV is notorious for being underfunded) because of this vision and the fact that I would be given the opportunity to work with Moon Ihl-hwan who had been appointed by Jie-ae as newsroom managing editor after a distinguished career as a reporter for Reuters and Business Week.

Although foreign journalists have tended to be dismissive of Arirang TV, I was surprised by the quality of the talent in the newsroom. Most of the young staff were passionate about their work and highly-educated, with many having studied at elite universities in the U.S. or the U.K. Jie-ae encouraged a culture of mentoring to develop their skills further. But we all knew we were working against a deadline. The post of Arirang TV CEO is a political appointment and we realized that a new top chief would be coming on board once a new Korean president was elected.

Unfortunately, once Park Geun-hye came into power, many of the gains that were achieved at Arirang TV several years ago appear to have faded away. The organization first entered a period of drift. At the beginning of 2014, Chung Sung-keun, a former anchor for SBS TV, was named as the new CEO. He had left SBS in 2012 to pursue a political career with the ruling Saenuri Party and acted as a spokesman for Park during her presidential campaign and then headed the party’s Paju branch.

Chung’s tenure at Arirang was brief. A few months later, President Park nominated him to become the new culture minister of culture, sports and tourism, whose duties include overseeing Arirang TV. But Chung was forced to withdraw his name after it was revealed that he had lied to the National Assembly at his confirmation hearing when he denied that he had engaged in real estate speculation.

The naming of Bang Suk-ho as the new Arirang TV CEO in December 2014 took its staff by surprise. Bang had no experience working as a journalist, but was rather a media lawyer who had been head of the government-related Korea Information Society Development Institute and had served as a board member for state-run broadcaster KBS. The political opposition alleged that Bang has gotten his job new because the culture minister, Kim Jong-deok, had graduated from and taught visual design at Hongik University, where Bang had been teaching law since 1993.

As the new Arirang TV CEO, Bang instituted an extensive cost-cutting program which he said were necessary to stem the channel’s long-standing losses. But it also led to the departure of many of the most qualified journalists and staff morale plummeted. It was also said that Bang harbored political ambitions and encouraged favorable coverage of President Park by Arirang reporters.

It was against that background that allegations last week that Bang had misused his Arirang TV corporate credit card to pay for travel and meals during visits by him and his family to the U.S. last year, including a million-won caviar dinner in New York, that ignited a political firestorm. Although Bang denied the allegations, he was quickly forced to resign.

As the Park administration contemplates his replacement, it should bear in mind that Arirang TV performs a valuable service in portraying Korea to the outside world and that it should be headed by a competent journalist with a global perspective instead of using the CEO post as a reward to political placeholders.

Unfortunately, President Park has shown little interest in reaching out to an international audience when it comes to media relations. Maybe that will change if Ban Ki-moon or Park Won-soon, who both recognize the importance of Korea’s international image, becomes the next president.

John Burton, a former Korea correspondent for the Financial Times, is now a Seoul-based independent journalist and media consultant. He can be reached at johnburtonft@yahoo.com.