Negative and false reporting is a problem for both Koreas. But how to address it without stifling South Korean freedom?
North and South Korea have been divided for 70 years — and for all that time, their systems, ideologies, and cultures have evolved in different directions.
Their media environment and reporting practices are one example. Although the two Koreas use the same language, it is often surprising to see how different their media reports are in terms of style, tone, and content.
Despite many differences, they share one thing at least: North and South both often use media outlets as a tool to attack each other and undermine each other by spreading malicious rumors.
In North Korea’s case, as previously reported, North Korea currently operates more than 160 propaganda websites, including news and tourism websites as well as online communities. While they do provide news and tourism information, the main goal is to promote North Korea and its ideology and turn as many people as they can into North Korean sympathizers.
The coverage of the defection of a dozen North Korean waitresses to the South in 2016 is a useful example of how North Korean media operates..
Twelve waitresses and their manager left a North Korean state-run restaurant in China for South Korea in April 2016. At that time, the South Korean government promptly announced their defection as voluntary, but Pyongyang said the waitresses were abducted by South Korean agents and demanded their repatriation.
North Korea’s propaganda websites used their reporting to undermine South Korea and the rare mass defection.
One of the most prominent North Korean propaganda websites, Arirang-Meari, reported in May 2016 that one of the 12 “abducted” waitresses died during a hunger strike demanding repatriation to the North. The U. S.-based pro-North Korean newspaper Minjok Tongshin also reported the same month that South Korea’s spy agency had detained one of the waitresses and left her to starve to death.
