The massive and unprecedented tax investigation of news media companies has been described as a ¡®war on the press¡¯ directly planned and orchestrated by Cheong Wa Dae. The government has repeated slogans about how the investigation was about ¡®just taxation¡¯ or that it was from the start an ¡®independent decision by the National Tax Service (NTS),¡¯ but it appears that everyone was right when they felt the slogans were only for show.
A certain political reporter with the Hankyoryeh Shinmun who has covered Cheong Wa Dae since the start of the current government has authored a book titled ¡°Why DJ Failed At Resolving Regional Discord.¡± Quotes in the book from high-ranking Cheong Wa Dae officials are naked revelations of how the government of Kim Dae-jung began on its high-intensity attack on press that viewed it critically, and why the current government was so obsessed with engaging in a tax investigation of news media companies. This is made clear in the book not through the author¡¯s subjective judgment, but through written record of actual comments, making it more graphic than your usual news article. If the comments are all true, then the book is significant as historical documentation of the government¡¯s policy towards the press.
At one point the book says that three years ago, in August of 1998, a senior presidential secretary hinted at the government¡¯s readiness to go to war when he said that press reform ¡°must be carried out. Once [we] start, it will be a war over life and death.¡± In November of the same year he said that ¡°The JoongAng and Segye are going to be done in right off. [We¡¯re] not going to just let the Chosun off after a few months,¡± and that the way to do this would be to have the NTS go after inheritance taxes. In other words, the concrete method, namely the tax investigation, had already been decided.
Until now even a child was able to guess that the theory that Cheong Wa Dae was orchestrating the tax investigation of news media companies was a scenario that only lacked concrete evidence. Still the government, a few groups that have supported it, and the pro-government publications all went on about ¡®just taxation.¡¯ Its man in the field, the director of the NTS, spoke of how he was working ¡°with the same feeling of those who burnt the house of Yi Gi-bung,¡± and that as director he began the investigation ¡°as my own decision made out of patriotism.¡± In a section of quotes included in the book in question, one is left shocked at the hatred and hostility of those in power towards their critics in the press. Expressions such as ¡°a war of life and death,¡± ¡°we¡¯re going to spear them,¡± ¡°the government will risk everything,¡± and that ¡°we are left with no choice¡± are everywhere, and they reveal a fierce combativeness that is not ordinarily seen in what is nevertheless normally a strained relationship between the ruling governments and the press. One¡¯s mouth drops open when you get to the point where a certain powerful insider actually says that ¡°all the top officials at the NTS have been replaced with people from the Honam region¡± in preparation for the fight with the press.
In democratic states, the proper role of the press is to continually criticize the press. Governments are doing what they¡¯re supposed to when instead of becoming angry, they lend ear to the legitimate criticism and take the press to task when the criticism is not well based, and it is this pull and tug relationship that helps countries move forward. If, as the author of this new book asserts, the motive for the tax investigation was rage at ¡°the media that despite the president¡¯s winning of the Nobel Prize emphasize nothing but economic difficulties, make allegations about corruption, and all too often criticize appointment practices for favoring people from the Honam region,¡± then we have to ask whether those in power are qualified to run the country.
(October 26, 2001)
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"Press Under Siege."
