hankyoreh

The board at KBS has voted to fire the broadcaster’s president, Jung Yun-joo, by accepting the Board of Audit and Inspection’s demand that he be removed from his position. The decision took place while police were charging into the building to violently remove employees who were protesting the move, during which some board members left the room. They say President Lee Myung-bak will soon finalize the decision and that a warrant for Jung’s arrest is imminent. Lee’s tenacious attempt to seize control of the media is gradually being realized.

The situation does not stop there, either. Reports are that police are about to enter YTN, where employees are protesting a move to place one of Lee’s close aides as YTN’s president. A search of the offices of the MBC program “The Producer’s Notebook” is expected as well. So Lee’s administration is making clear its intentions to do all it can to quiet criticism.

It is frightening that these things are happening at random and without legal basis. The BAI’s demand that Jung be fired, the KBS board’s decision to accept that demand, and President Lee’s “formal decision” all make it look like each is a part of proper procedures, but in fact all go against what is stated in the law. Article 32 of the Board of Audit and Inspection Act states it can demand that someone at a government agency or corporation be fired for “clear illegality.” It has found none, but acted anyway, so it was not something the broadcasting company’s board should have had on its agenda in the first place.

KBS’s board does not have the authority to recommend that the company’s president be removed. The old Broadcast Law gave the president of the country the authority to appoint and dismiss the head of KBS, but in its current form the Broadcast Law gives the country’s president only the authority to appoint the head of KBS and it establishes a set term for the head of KBS as well. The intent was clearly to, for KBS’s independence and autonomy, make it so that the president cannot remove whoever is in charge at the public broadcasting company. The decision to include the BAI’s recommendation that Jung be fired on the board’s agenda and the idea of having President Lee do the actual firing are, therefore, lacking in legal basis and as such are illegal and invalid. It is an excessively broad interpretation of the facts to ignore that and indiscriminately claim that President Lee has the authority to fire Jung and it also goes against the spirit of the Constitution. This is why you are inevitably hearing the criticism that this is a “press coup.”

The Lee administration has shown no prudence in its choice of means and methods when it comes to taking control of the media. Government agencies like the prosecution and the BAI and the ruling Grand National Party have all been mobilized in the campaign to kick Jung out of KBS. They have not so much as hesitated to take desperate measures such as dismissing, without legal basis, members of the board who are opposed to these moves, so as to be able to get a pro-administration board.

The administration is making its goal of manipulating the media clear while ignoring law, common sense, and principles in doing so. Influential types in the Blue House and elsewhere in the administration are openly saying things to the effect that it is “bad for the running of government” to have a “confrontational situation between state broadcasting and state power.” The thinking is anachronistic for believing broadcasting should be government broadcasting that repeats the administration’s lines like a parrot. It also wholly ignores the achievements our society has made in democratization, namely the way public broadcasting has been made independent from political power. Furthermore, Korea Communications Commission head Choi Si-joong is trying to ignore the last remaining procedures as he openly talks as if it is he who gets to appoint Jung’s replacement. It is vulgar thinking, the kind that wants to make broadcasting the administration’s private property.

The independence in broadcasting achieved through the broadcasting democratization struggle of the 1990s is facing a serious crisis. The danger of having our entire society return to the Yusin and Fifth Republic dictatorships has become greater. This must not be looked on idly.

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]