[News analysis] Who really are the anonymous sources connected to North Korea?

Posted on : 2016-09-21 16:21 KST Modified on : 2019-10-19 20:29 KST
Anonymously-sourced news reports are another unfortunate outcome of antagonistic state of inter-Korean relations

At 6 am on Aug. 18, Yonhap, South Korea’s main news agency released an “exclusive” article that stated, “A source familiar with the North Korean situation said the father of Thae Yong-ho, a minister-level diplomat at the North Korean embassy in London, appears to have been first-generation anti-Japanese partisan Thae Byong-ryol, who served as a dispatch rider to Kim Il-sung.”

The article’s content was reported in turn by several other news outlets.

At 7 pm the previous day, South Korean Ministry of Unification spokesperson Jeong Joon-hee announced at an emergency press conference that Thae - whom he called the “highest-ranking North Korean diplomat who has defected to date” - had arrived in South Korea with his family. All eyes were on the Yonhap News report. An anti-Japanese partisan bloodline was seen as the highest possible in North Korea apart from the so-called “Baekdu bloodline” connecting Kim Il-sung to son Kim Jong-il and grandson and current leader Kim Jong-un. Thae Byong-ryol was also a key presence in the North Korean elite who served as a general in the People’s Army before his death in 1997.

One problem: the report wasn’t true. On Aug. 23, the National Intelligence Service (NIS) reported to the National Assembly Intelligence Committee that Thae Yong-ho was not the son of Thae Byong-ryol.

So who was this “source familiar with the North Korean situation”? Who convinced an experienced reporter with a prominent news agency that they had an “exclusive” story to report - even though it wasn’t true? Was it an NIS agent or high-ranking figure with a foreign affairs and national security agency? A North Korean defector claiming ties with North Korean authorities? A businessperson trading with North Korea in its Chinese border region? Someone with years of experience in humanitarian aid or exchange and cooperation with North Korea? A scholar specializing in North Korean issues? The questions only multiply - yet there are no clues toward identifying the source. A “North Korea source” has no identity. He or she is a phantom.

 

Source terminology can hint at identity

The rule in journalism is to identify sources by name. There are exceptions, though. First among them are instances where anonymous reporting is unavoidable as a way of protecting privacy or other human rights. An example would be keeping the name of the victim secret when reporting on a sexual assault. Second would be a case where opinions are needed to guarantee the public’s right to now, and the subject is a high-ranking source who would never agree to reveal their name. For news outlets in the US and other Western countries, anonymous reporting is granted as an exception when the subjects are high-ranking officials in foreign policy areas.

South Korean news outlets tend not to limit their anonymous quoting of high-ranking government officials to the areas of foreign policy and national security. Instead, they are used more broadly. As a reporting practice, it leaves much to be desired. But even in this case, various methods are used to provide a clue toward the anonymous source’s identity - distinguishing them from the kinds of sources whose identity cannot be guessed. When anonymous quotes are used unavoidably for reporting convenience rather than human rights productions, the guideline is that enough devices should be used that readers or listeners might be able to infer who the source is.

A sort of shorthand is used whenever government officials are used as sources. They are identified as “high-ranking official,” “(high) senior official,” “senior official,” and “official,” in descending order of prestige. “High-ranking officials” are typically in political service, namely a minister or vice minister. While “high-ranking government official” could refer to any one of dozens of people, a “senior Ministry of Foreign Affairs official” could only be one of three people: Minister of Foreign Affairs Yun Byung-se, First Vice Minister Lim Sung-nam, or Second Vice Minister Cho Tae-yul. A “senior Ministry of Unification source” would be either Unification Minister Hong Yong-pyo or Vice Unification Minister Kim Hyung-suk.

“(High) senior official” often refers to an assistant vice minister or a senior professional public servant at the office director level, as opposed to a minister or vice minister. If Special Representative for Korean Peninsula Peace and Security Affairs Kim Hong-kyun, South Korea’s senior representative at the Six-Party Talks on the North Korean nuclear issue, were to speak to the press on condition of anonymity, he would typically be listed as a “(high) senior Ministry of Foreign Affairs official.” A kinder reporter might name him as a “senior Ministry of Foreign Affairs authority in charge of matters related to the Six-Party Talks and North Korea‘s nuclear program.”

“Senior official” refers to someone at the director general level in a central government agency. A reference to a “Ministry of Foreign Affairs authority involved in discussions and implementation of the South Korean and Japanese government’s Dec. 28 agreement on the comfort women issue” would essentially mean the director of the ministry’s Northeast Asia bureau.

“Official” refers to someone at the section director level in a central government agency. Apart from highly exceptional circumstances, government officials below the section director level are not used as sources for articles. Even at the working level, no one has authority to decide policy.

By following this hierarchy, reports offer a hint for readers with enough background knowledge of the article’s context to gather who the source might be.

A document titled
A document titled

 

Sometimes info is leaked for manipulation

In contrast, the word “source” is generally used when the person being quoted anonymously is not a public official. But since there aren’t any fixed rules about this, it can be difficult to determine the source’s identity. Because of these considerations, there‘s a huge difference in credibility between stories that quote “officials” and those that quote “sources,” even though they are all technically anonymous reports.

In theory, responsible media outlets and journalists who are scrupulous about their reporting ethics make an effort not to write or publish articles that rely upon “sources.” It is acceptable to leave a “source” anonymous when it is necessary to conceal their identity because of the sensitive nature of the story. But at such times, the unwritten rule that reporters should double check their sources must be applied with exceptional strictness. Otherwise, reporters are liable to print false reports or to be manipulated into become unwitting publicists for their source.

Here’s one example. On the afternoon of Feb. 10, the Unification Ministry beat reporters with a document titled, “North Korea’s abruptly purged Ri Yong-gil, chief of the General Staff of the Korean People’s Army, in early February.” The document said that Lee, a 61-year-old general, had been executed in early February on charges of factionalism, corruption and abuse of power. The Ministry required reporters to cite a “source related to North Korea” in their articles.

Feb. 10 was the day that the administration of President Park Geun-hye responded to North Korea‘s rocket launch on Feb. 7 by announcing the complete shutdown of the Kaesong Industrial Complex. When the Unification Ministry provided the press with the document about the execution of Ri Yong-gil, it was presumably part of a propaganda campaign aimed at diverting public attention from the shutdown of the Kaesong Complex (which had been described as the last safety valve for inter-Korean relations) and at fomenting public anger at the “reckless and despicable” Kim Jong-un regime with its “regular nuclear tests and ballistic missile launches.”

According to the government’s organizational scheme, the Unification Ministry is the agency that handles North Korea policy. Collecting intelligence about North Korea is the work of the National Intelligence Service (NIS).

It was irresponsible and politically calculated for the government to leak sensitive information about North Korea to the press under the mask of a “source connected with North Korea.” That is especially the case since the information in question was not even true. The Park administration had claimed that Ri Yong-gil had been executed in early February, but a report in the May 10 edition of the Rodong Sinmun newspaper confirmed that Ri had been selected as a candidate member of the Central Military Commission and the Politburo during the first plenary session of the 7th Congress of the Korean Workers’ Party Central Committee on May 9. This marked the return of a man who had supposedly been killed.

This topic was addressed in a column titled “Rumors, Misinformation and Anonymity: The Challenges of Reporting on North Korea” that ran in the New York Times on Sep. 16. “South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, or N.I.S., is a frequent source of North Korean news in the South Korean media [. . .] insisting that it be attributed to an anonymous source. [. . .] The government of South Korea, especially N.I.S., has been accused of leaking selected information - or even incomplete and unverified intelligence - about the North to help influence domestic opinion and push its policies,” the column said.

Reports originating from “sources” do not always prove incorrect. Take this one for example: “On [Jan.] 15, a source in intelligence said that North Korean leader Kim Jong-il had instructed the KWP Organization and Guidance Department on Jan. 8 that he had chosen Jong-un, his son by his third wife, Ko Yong-hui, as his heir.” This was the key information in an article on Jan. 15, 2009, by Choi Seon-yeong and Jang Yong-hun, reporters for Yonhap News, which broke the news that North Korea had decided to transfer power to a member of the third generation of the Kim dynasty.

At the time of publication, this article did not create much of a stir. There was hardly anyone at the time who expected that Kim Jong-un would become North Korea’s third leader, considering that Kim had never shown his face at a single public event and that even his name was being misspelled in the Korean press. But then a picture of Kim Jong-un standing next to Kim Jong-il at the 3rd Conference of the Korean Workers’ Party (which was held after a hiatus of 44 years) in Sep. 2010 ran on page one of the Sep. 29 edition of the Rodong Sinmun, and Kim Yong-nam, president of the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly, said during an interview with Associated Press Television News that “We now have the honor of serving Comrade Kim Jong-un, the young general.” It was only then that the Yonhap story was belatedly confirmed to have been a major scoop.

Even after receiving the Korea Journalist Award in 2011, the two reporters did not reveal who the “source in intelligence” had been. At the same time, they did discuss how they had gone about verifying the credibility of their source and about how it had been necessary to preserve the source’s anonymity in their acceptance speech for the 42nd Korean Journalist Award.

“We were able to produce exclusive articles about North Korea from the same sources, including a story about Jang Song-thaek being under house arrest in 2003 and about Kim Ok, fourth wife of Kim Jong-il. [. . .] Because of questions about the credibility of tips or intelligence about the North Korean establishment and because of the surprising selection of Jong-un, the third son who was only in his mid-twenties, we decided against immediately writing an article and mobilized all our trustworthy sources not only in South Korea but also in the US, Japan and China to track changes in North Korea’s internal power structure. We were acting on our belief that we could not write a report without multiple confirmations of the fact, given the closed nature of North Korean society. [. . .] While it is standard practice to reveal the identity of sources, we had no choice but to leave this source anonymous since there is a greater need to protect the identity of sources related to North Korea than in other areas because of concerns for their physical safety.”

 

When inter-Korean relations are good, there is less use of anonymous sources
It’s not easy to report on North Korea. Not only is it nearly impossible to do direct reporting inside North Korea, but there are few ways to confirm the veracity of the information being reported. Aside from rare exceptions, the North Korean government does not provide information to reporters from media organizations that are outside the North.
When there is something that it wants to say, the North Korean government makes use of the Rodong Sinmun or the Korea Central News Agency, but it is not easy to distinguish between fact and propaganda. Even when South Korean and foreign media print major errors, the North Korean government does not request corrections or take legal action. Under such circumstances, it is not easy to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Reporting about North Korea has not always depended upon anonymous sources as in recent years. When inter-Korean relations are good, there is less use of anonymous sources. When North and South Korea are on better terms, with officials from the two sides meeting frequently, and when there is regular exchange and cooperation in the private sector, more South Koreans have a chance to interact directly with North Koreans. Reporters also have more opportunities to visit the North and do reporting on the ground. That means that more sources are available for stories about North Korea and that those stories can be built on a stronger foundation.
During the presidencies of Kim Dae-jung (1993-1998) and Roh Moo-hyun (1998-2003) - when there were two inter-Korean summits, when dozens of government meetings were held each year, and when there were a multitude of cooperation and exchange programs, including the Kaesong Complex and tours to Mount Keumkang - there was not the flood of articles depending on unidentifiable sources as there is today.
When senior government officials are openly discussing the results of meetings and when numerous participants in cooperation and exchange projects are willing to go on the record and share news from North Korea, the media does not need to rely on anonymous sources.
But during since Lee Myung-bak became president in 2008, not a single South Korean reporter has openly visited Pyongyang for the purpose of reporting. Since Park became president, the government has ended its long-standing practice of allowing reporter pools to do on-site reporting at the inter-Korean government meetings that occur once in a blue moon.
By Lee Je-hun, staff reporter
Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]
 


button that move to original korean article (클릭시 원문으로 이동하는 버튼)

Related stories