Director of BBC World Service says tensions over North Korea’s nuclear tests vindicate the launch of a targeted service
The BBC is braced for a backlash from the North Korean government about the launch of a new service targeted at the country amid growing international tensions over its nuclear missile tests.
Francesca Unsworth, the director of BBC World Service, said the corporation was wary about launching the new North Korean service next month due to the likely opposition from the government but insisted the fragile political situation vindicated the move.
In an interview with the Guardian, she said: “We are reaching an incredibly febrile, dangerous atmosphere at the moment about that whole story, and isn’ t it terrible for the people of North Korea that the only information that they getting about any of this is that woman who goes on North Korean television every night?
“We talked for many years about whether it was worthwhile doing something for the most in-need country of the world. This is right at the head of the BBC’s mission to bring independent news to people most in need – and Korea is the country most in need, followed by Ethiopia and Eritrea.”
The service will launch just weeks after Donald Trump, the US president, threatened to unleash “fire and fury” on North Korea, which responded by announcing a detailed plan to fire missiles at the US Pacific territory of Guam .
Korean is one of 12 new language services being launched by the BBC over the next few weeks in the biggest expansion of the World Service since the 1940s. The expansion involves hiring 1,400 staff and is backed by £289m of funding from the government. Other services that are launching include Pidgin, which is spoken by 75 million people in Nigeria, Punjabi and Serbian.
Tony Hall, director general of the BBC, said the new services marked “the start of a new chapter for the BBC” and called the World Service “one of the UK’s most important cultural exports”.
However, Unsworth said the North Korean embassy in London had told the BBC “in no uncertain terms” that they did not want the Korean service to be launched.
The service will broadcast a half-hour radio programme daily, that will go out in the middle of the night so that, in the words of Unsworth, “people have the opportunity to listen under their bedclothes without telling the neighbours”.
