When President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea shocked the nation by declaring martial law, he placed news organizations under the rule of military command and outlawed “fake news.” It was a striking escalation of his long-running feud with media critical of his administration.
But when faced with censorship by the military, the Korean press did not acquiesce. News organizations spanning the political spectrum — even right-leaning publications more aligned with Mr. Yoon’s conservative People Power Party — stood united in criticism of his actions and any efforts to limit a free press.
Mr. Yoon, a former prosecutor, described his decision to declare martial law late on Tuesday as an act “of national resolve against the anti-state forces that are trying to paralyze the essential functions of the state and disrupt the constitutional order of our liberal democracy.” As part of the declaration, the South Korean military issued a decree prohibiting “fake news, public opinion manipulation, and false propaganda,” placing all media and publications under its control.
While Mr. Yoon reversed the declaration about six hours later, it offered a glimpse of the risks posed by years of challenges to press freedoms in South Korea by the country’s political leaders.
An editorial in Chosun Ilbo, one of South Korea’s biggest daily newspapers with a conservative leaning, called the president’s actions an international “embarrassment.” Mr. Yoon needed to answer to the public on how he intended to “take responsibility” for this situation, it added.
“How can the current situation justify restricting the basic rights of citizens?,” the paper wrote.
In the liberal Hankyoreh, an editorial declared: “The Republic of Korea’s biggest security risk is ‘Yoon Suk Yeol.’”
Chun Young-sun, managing editor of Korea JoongAng Daily, the English-language edition of daily newspaper JoongAng Ilbo, said there were no guidelines for how to react when the government declares martial law because it had not happened for decades. She said the outlet’s first reaction was to report the facts and send reporters out to the scene.
“At no point did we consider stopping or limiting coverage,” she said in a LinkedIn post. “The idea that we would do anything but continue reporting never really crossed our minds.”
(Korea JoonAng Daily copublishes its print edition with The International New York Times.)
A consortium of unions representing journalists and media industry workers condemned Mr. Yoon in a statement, calling his actions “anti-democratic,” “unconstitutional” and a denial of the “historical achievements of democracy and press freedom that the entire nation has fought for with blood over half a century.”
Press freedom was one of the hard-earned rights that South Koreans gained in the country’s difficult march toward democracy from the 1980s, after decades of military rule and sweeping media controls. Today, South Korea has dozens of broadcasters and hundreds of newspapers — although the country, like many others, is grappling with how to handle the damage of disinformation spread by social media.
Park Sung Hee, a professor of media at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, said the media’s aggressive and critical response to the declaration of martial law showed that “Korea’s press freedom is alive and well.” She noted that South Koreans are very digitally connected and that “any attempt to suppress or dominate the flow of information cannot easily succeed.”
When Mr. Yoon took office in 2022, after eking out a victory in the closest race of any free presidential election in the country’s history, he seemed open to the press — going as far as fielding questions from reporters in the morning as he arrived for work.
At the time, it came as a sharp contrast to the previous president, Moon Jae-in, and his liberal Democratic Party. In 2021, Mr. Moon’s government tried unsuccessfully to enact a proposal to stamp out what it deemed “fake news” with hefty financial penalties. Amid outcry from journalists and news organizations, the legislation failed to pass.
But Mr. Yoon’s media honeymoon did not last. He, too, turned openly hostile with the press: The president has turned to a combination of lawsuits, regulation and criminal investigations in an effort to suppress what he considered disinformation.
Under Mr. Yoon, police and prosecutors have raided newsrooms and the homes of journalists whom his office has accused of spreading “fake news.” His administration and political allies have filed a series of defamation cases that carry possible criminal charges.
In a 2023 human rights report on South Korea, the U.S. State Department said the government was “accused of using libel and slander laws, which were broadly defined and criminalized defamation, to restrict public discussion and harass, intimidate or censor private and media expression.”
Lee Sangwon, an assistant professor at Korea University School of Media & Communication, said, in general, that the Korean press had been reluctant to be overly critical of Mr. Yoon in the past, but the declaration of martial law was such an extreme act that the media was united in condemning the president.
“It was a tipping point,” he said.
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