Korean Press Freedom Ranked 50th

The freedom of the Korean press was ranked as 50th in the world by U.S.-based Freedom House, a world-famous human rights group.
According to the report on 'World Human Rights in 1999', recently released on the Internet by Freedom House, Korea takes joint 50th place out of 186 countries surveyed with the score of 28, along with Hungary, Israel, and South Africa.
The human rights group classified a country scoring between 0 and 30 as a 'free state', by calculating levels of press freedom. A country scoring between 31 and 60 is a 'partly free state' and an 'unfree' state scores from 61 to 100.
North Korea and Afganistan are ranked lowest in press freedom with the score of 100.
The group pointed out that the Korean press has not enjoyed satisfactory freedom since President Kim has been in office because they are indirectly pressured to change their headlines and articles almost daily by the government.
Seo Jang-soo:jsbee@joongang.co.kr