If the American public isn't well informed about Korea, the American press is partly to blame. "Coverage of Korea has [traditionally] intensified during crises," like the Korean War, the Kwangju Uprising and the IMF Crisis, says Donald Kirk, longtime Asia correspondent for the International Herald Tribune, Asian Wall Street Journal and South China Morning Post, as well as editor of a new collection of journalism on Korea: Korea Witness: 135 Years of War, Crisis and News in the Land of the Morning Calm. But after the crises abate, Kirk says, so does the media's interest in Korea.

This pattern of alternating excitement and disinterest isn't new. In 1871, photographer Felice Beato became the first American journalist to visit Korea when he rushed to cover the Kanghwa Island conflict, but Beato left shortly after the shooting stopped. News of Korea's anti-Japanese rebellion in March of 1919 reached the outside world only because an American businessman happened to be in the country and filed a report for the Associated Press.

Western journalists who wanted to continue covering Korea after the frenzy of press activity during the Korean War faced opposition from the country's military government. For much of his rule, Park Chung-hee prevented foreign news organizations from setting up bureaus in Seoul. Prior to the late 1970s, when the Wall Street Journal became the first paper to establish a permanent presence in the country, most of what reached the West about Korea came from a small set of Korean correspondents.

Korea became friendlier to press during the 1980s, though the government still regulated access to sources and mandated that official "minders" be present at interviews. By the early 1990s, however, the information control regimen had fallen away entirely.

This openness hasn't done much to change the "crisis coverage" mentality of most American news organizations. The pattern continues to the present. Just weeks ago, the American media was buzzing with stories about North Korea's nuclear test. Now, even with North Korea's return to the Six-Party Talks tenuous, coverage has dropped off precipitously. Meanwhile, major stories in Korea-such as the progress of the ongoing U.S.-ROK free trade talks-go entirely unreported in major papers.

Unfortunately, Kirk feels, there probably isn't much that can change this pattern, at least in the near term.

Wednesday, November 8, 2006 

About the Speaker

Covering Korea in a Time of Crisis

with 

Donald Kirk
Journalist, Author
Editor, Korea Witness: 135 Years of War, Crisis and News in the Land of the Morning Calm.

Donald Kirk has been reporting from Asia since 1972. In addition to his forthcoming book, he is the author of Korean Crisis: Unraveling the Miracle in the IMF Era and Korean Dynasty: Hyundai and Chung Ju Yung. From 1997 through 2003, Kirk was the Seoul correspondent for the International Herald Tribune. Kirk’s articles have appeared in The Asian Wall Street Journal, South China Morning Post, Newsday, The Nation and National Review.

Original announcement:

Korea is the land of the morning calm, but when Americans have watched news of it, they’ve seen images of war, civil unrest and financial meltdown. The problem? Korea has traditionally been seen by Western media as a “crisis story.” This has been the pattern for over a century. In 1871, the first ever U.S. journalist to visit Korea, photo-engraver Felice Beato, rushed to cover the Kanghwa Island skirmishes—and coverage continued through the Russo-Japanese War. Then foreign journalists lost interest in Korean events and left. They returned intermittently, but only when potential headlines were exciting enough—during the Korean War, the upheaval of the 1980s and the nuclear crisis of the 1990s. Throughout, sustained, context-heavy reportage has been missing. Veteran Korea correspondent and author Donald Kirk will explain the attitudes and actions behind the Western news media’s uneven coverage of Korea as detailed in his new book, Korea Witness: 135 Years of War, Crisis and News in the Land of the Morning Calm.