I know someone must have mentioned this before, but does anyone else find it a tad unusual to hold an international journalism conference in North Korea?
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I know someone must have mentioned this before, but does anyone else find it a tad unusual to hold an international journalism conference in North Korea?
Korea News via Google
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“FJ President Warren said the Mt. Geumgang special conference would mark the first of its kind in its history. ‘It reflects the growing importance of the role and concern of global journalists for the peace and reunification of the Korean Peninsula.’”
I recommend that everyone brush up on their Newspeak vocabulary. The best guidea are in the appendix of Orwell’s 1984 and his essay “Politics and the English Language.”e
is Mt. Geumgang really NK anyway? i thought it was a diplomatic zone fro SK, kind of like an embassy. The idea that Nk would hold an int’l journalism conference is pretty damn funny tho. Maybe they can have some electives on propaganda, and the art of using the media for international extortion.
Reporters Without Borders, October 2003:
Reporters Without Borders today publishes its second world press freedom ranking. Like last year, the most catastrophic situation is to found in Asia, with eight countries in the bottom ten : North Korea, Burma, Laos, China, Iran, Vietnam, Turkmenistan and Bhutan. Independent news media are either non-existent in these countries, or are constantly repressed by the authorities. Journalists there work in extremely difficult conditions, with no freedom and no security.
Korea Times, April 29, 2004:
A U.S. human rights organization assessing freedom of the press around the world has placed South Korea close to 70th and North Korea at the very bottom of its rankings of 193 countries for 2003. The study by Freedom House, based in New York, put Seoul 68th and Pyongyang 193rd in the degrees of their journalistic independence from political pressure and legal harassment. . . .
South China Morning Post, October 25, 2004:
North Korea has been named the worst violator of press freedom in the world for a third consecutive year, media rights watchdog Reporters Sans Frontieres said yesterday. The Paris-based group said North Korean journalists were subjected to re-education for misspelling officials’ names or sent to concentration camps for doubting the government’s view.
With all media controlled by the communist party revering supreme leader Kim Jong-il and his late father Kim Il-sung, journalists serve simply as propaganda tools in North Korea. “At least 40 journalists have been re-educated for such `journalistic errors’ as misspelling a senior official’s name,” the group said. “Others have been sent to concentration camps. This happened to television journalist Song Keum-chul, who disappeared in 1996 for questioning the official version of certain historic events.”
Pravda (!), October 21, 2005:
International media watchdog Reporters Without Borders says East Asia is the part of the world with poorest press freedoms in the world. Publishing its 2005 World Press Freedom Index, the organisation lists North Korea as the very worst in the world, bottom of the list of 167 countries, reports BBC.