hankyoreh

South Korea‘s presidential office

The Blue House is being accused of trying to intimidate the media after back-to-back lawsuits against news outlets that reported on alleged meddling in state affairs by Chung Yoon-hoi, President Park Geun-hye’s Chief of Staff when she was a second term lawmaker.

The Blue House is now being criticized for deliberately trying to prevent the media from following the case and monitoring the government in the public’s interest.

On Dec. 8, Blue House Chief of Staff Kim Ki-choon lodged a complaint with prosecutors against a reporter with the Dong-A Ilbo newspaper, whom he accused of “defamation through printed matter” over an article alleging that a document on the “movements” of Chung - believed to be a behind-the-scenes power broker in the Park administration - was drafted on Kim’s orders.

The complaint came ten days after eight Blue House secretaries leveled the same accusation on Nov. 28 against a Segye Ilbo newspaper reporter for a piece about an internal report alleging interference in government operations by Chung. Three of the eight were the so-called “triumvirate” of administrative affairs secretary Lee Jae-man and first and second personal secretaries Jeong Ho-seong and Ahn Bong-geun.

In both cases, the complaints came the morning of the report after Blue House spokesperson Min Kyung-wook declared that “strong measures” would be taken.

While the Blue House is ultimately responsible for the complaints, they appear to have been filed on behalf of individual secretaries or the Chief of Staff because of previous Supreme Court rulings finding that a government or state agency cannot be a victim of criminal defamation.

The Blue House’s abuse of defamation law to file suits against the media, previously a hallmark of the Lee Myung-bak administration (2008-13), has only intensified since Park took office. Under the current administration the Blue House has already filed suit demanding corrections and compensation from the Hankyoreh and the CBS network for alleged defamations in reports on April’s Sewol ferry sinking. The litigation is still under way.

Another trial involving Tatsuya Kato, former Seoul bureau chief for Japan’s Sankei Shimbun newspaper, has been ongoing since August, when the Blue House said it would hold him “to the fullest extent of civil and criminal liability” for alleging a connection between Chung and Park’s whereabouts on the day of the sinking.

Analysts are suggesting the intended effect of the Blue House lawsuits may be to cow the media by showing that critical reporting could be met with legal action.

“If you look at the precedents set with things like the mad cow disease reports by [television news program] ‘PD Notebook,’ which resulted in a not-guilty ruling, there’s little chance of reports in the public interest resulting in defamation of any state agency or public official,” said Kim Seo-joong, a professor of media studies at Sungkonghoe University.

“When the Blue House knows this and goes ahead with the lawsuits anyway, it looks like it‘s trying to gag the media by applying pressure and scaring them away from reporting,” Kim added.

By Kim Kyung-wook, staff reporter

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