By Park Ji-won
My mobile phone rang suddenly one afternoon last week. The call was from a senior member of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) public relations section. I missed the call, but a text message followed.
The message was simple. “I called you to ask the name of the chief of the Seoul Foreign Correspondents' Club (SFCC) and his mobile phone number.” The PR person was apparently trying to contact the organization.
The DPK had earlier released a statement blaming a reporter by name over an article she wrote for Bloomberg in September, which appeared under the headline, “South Korea's Moon becomes Kim Jong-un's Top Spokesman at UN.”
The country's main opposition Liberty Korea Party's (LKP) floor leader used the story to attack Moon's dovish policy toward North Korea. The DPK criticized the story, directly mentioning the reporter's name. The reporter's name went viral and she received insults from DPK loyalists for insulting President Moon. Later, the ruling party apologized for causing a misunderstanding for foreign correspondents and deleted the personal information.
The SFCC released a statement March 16 expressing its grave concerns about the DPK statement that singled out the Bloomberg reporter for her coverage of Moon, which has resulted in serious threats to her personal safety.
Likewise, the DPK approach to contact me was also in line with what the party did to the reporter; the DPK was ignorant about the media and thus rude and threatening.
First, The Korea Times is not a member of the SFCC because the publication is a local newspaper. The DPK PR official may have known this or simply did not pay attention. Either way, he did not do his homework to find the right person to contact, showing that the DPK apparently does not know the meaning of foreign correspondents.
Second, if an organization wants to apologize or do something with another organization, it should be a group-to-group communication. In that sense, the DPK should have called the SFCC directly, not an individual like me.
Phoning an individual reporter is a dangerous idea because it could be a way to pressure the person to change his or her article, endangering freedom of media. I felt pressured by the call because the caller has the political power to influence the media and reporters, including myself.
A DPK official said the party did not have a system to monitor the publication in English or other languages, showing the party's lack of knowledge about foreign language media. Still, it cannot be an excuse for having contacted an individual.
If the party wants to support Moon's peace drive and influence the international society, it should learn not to target an individual but introduce a system to make an official complaint about a situation.