Right will prevail in the end: It took exactly one generation for Korea to prove the morality of this maxim in the context of the media industry's most serious tragedy.
It is welcome ― if belated ― that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission recommended Thursday the government apologize and compensate victims of the forced media mergers of 1980 by the administration of the general-turned-president Chun Doo-hwan.
In what journalism gurus refer to as the ``media massacre," the military dictators restructured the nation's 64 media outlets into 18 ― 14 newspapers, three broadcasters and one wire service ― by shutting down the other 46, including the Seoul Economic Daily, the sister paper of The Korea Times, and kicking out more than 1,000 ``disobedient" journalists.
Unfortunately, the commission's decision is just a recommendation with no binding force and lacks detailed methods on how to compensate the victims. Nor will it be easy for the victims ― companies and individuals ― to precisely estimate the damages by today's property value to demand reparation. Determining how to do this should be the next task for the panel and other related government agencies.
The lessons from the forced mergers and shutdowns are clear enough, however, in that any governmental attempt to force the restructuring of the media industry is bound to fail, and only reveals its time-old scheme of media control and lack of confidence to justly administer state affairs.
We are afraid the Lee Myung-bak administration's attempt to redraw the picture of Korea's media industry may end up as a 21st-century version of artificial restructuring.
President Lee and his aides say the government's media reform law, which was railroaded at the National Assembly by the governing Grand National Party last year, will help to develop the nation's media sector and create numerous jobs. But it is hard to know whether the law, which calls for allowing large newspapers and big businesses to also run broadcasting stations, will bring about industrial and employment success.
Even if such a reshuffle leads to some improvement of industrial efficiency, its biggest victim will be the diversity of public opinion, as the whole sector will be reorganized around a couple of giant newspaper-broadcaster combinations.
If past efforts for media control were made illegally with guns and swords, such attempts will be made legally with money in the future.
Sadly, the media industry will find itself far more vulnerable to attempts to control it by the powerful and the moneyed: Thirty years ago, large newspapers tried to fight against the attempted merger of media by big businesses. Now, however, they are taking the lead in the forced overhaul of media industry.