The Marmot’s Hole

Controversy and suspicions surround the handling of a video tape of Kim Sun-il by Associated Press. Courtesy the Korea Times:

Rep. Park Jin of the Grand National Party on Monday said the Associated Press aired an edited version of Kim Sun-il videotape a day after his death on June 22, deleting critical information such as his home address in South Korea.

Two AP reporters in Seoul failed to attend the second day of the National Assembly hearing on Kim’s death despite being requested to appear. It is not clear whether they will participate in the final day of the hearing on Tuesday.

Park said the AP had cut two third of the original videotape, which it had received on June 2 from an unidentified source in Iraq, questioning why the AP had deleted important information.

The AP has been criticized for attempting to cover up its mishandling of the videotape, an early investigation into which could have helped save Kim’s life.

The AP claims three of its reporters in Seoul called the foreign ministry around June 3, inquiring about any cases of missing South Korean nationals in Iraq, after its bureau in Baghdad obtained the videotape a day earlier.

Sources close to the AP bureau in Seoul have explained that Kim Sun-il in the videotape did not look like a captive, so it curtailed its investigation.

However, Park found it suspicious that the AP Television News had deleted critical information and aired the tape only after Kim’s death was confirmed by the pan-Arab satellite channel Al-Jazeera on June 22.

“The edited version of the videotape didn’t contain the information necessary to confirm his identity,” Park said. “The AP should explain who shortened it and for what purpose.”

In the unabbreviated version of videotape, Kim clearly tells his captor, who is not shown, his exact home address in Pusan, 310 kilometers southeast of Seoul.

“The AP should make it clear why it had neglected its work in confirming Kim’s identity even though he had mentioned every crucial piece of information, including his home address, in the videotape, which they obtained in Iraq,” Park said.

Park said the original version of the videotape is 13 minutes long, rather than 4 minutes and 30 seconds that South Korean broadcasters had aired.

Sources said Park knows it is a normal procedure for the AP to edit a video but he thinks the deleted parts of the videotape have valuable information.

I’m a bit perplexed as to what exactly happened here — given that a man’s life was at stake, it seems odd that AP wouldn’t press the issue a little more aggressively. OhMyNews, of course, has its suspicions. Quoting Uri Party lawmaker Song Yeong-gil, OhMy’s Kim Tae-gyeong suggests that APTN was either asked by someone — that someone being the U.S. military authorities in Iraq — not to broadcast the video ala CBS with the Iraqi prison abuse photos, or APTN took into account certain political factors — those factors being Korea’s impending decision to send troops to Iraq — and sat on the tape. The “attempts” by AP’s Seoul Bureau, which was conveniently not informed of all of Kim Sun-il’s personal information as contained in the original tape, was simply a ruse or alibi to cover AP’s ass. Or so the suspicions go. Frankly, I’m not a conspiracy theory sort of guy, and I’m not familiar enough with how a place like AP (or any other media outlet, for that matter) operates to know how worthy of merit these allegations are. If some of the more journalistic-types out there care to lend me some insight, I’d appreciate it. For now, I’ll just copy what I read.

On the other hand, OhMyNews finds it kind of odd that AP would go through only official Foreign Ministry routes in such a sensitive case. On Friday, AP reporter Suh Soo-kyong (who is extremely easy on the eyes, BTW) testified before the Assembly hearing that not only she, but two other AP Seoul Bureau reporters inquired about Kim’s kidnapping. The Foreign Official who took Suh’s call, however, testified that he didn’t recall getting inquiries from anyone other than Suh (and even then, he said he didn’t hear her use Kim Sun-il’s name). This suggests that if the other two reporters did make inquiries, they may have gone through other less “official” routes. Inquiring minds want to know if those routes were in the Foreign Ministry or other government ministries, and said minds that sit on the special parliamentary committee investigating Kim Sun-il’s death have requested that the other two AP reporters — Choe Sang-hun and Lee Soo-jeong — appear before a hearing to find out. The two have yet to show, although Choe has said he would do so as long as his testimony takes place behind closed doors and he gets the OK from AP headquarters.

Never a dull day here in Land of the Morning Calm.