Activists or lawmakers?

Kim Hyun-ki

The author is the Tokyo bureau chief and rotating correspondent of the JoongAng Ilbo.

“You are mopping the floor, aren’t you?” said former Rep. Han Sun-kyo, secretary general of the Liberty Korea Party four years ago, to reporters who were waiting for him before the door. While stepping out of a conference room of the opposition party, the four-term lawmaker cynically described the unique habit of Korean reporters sitting on the floor and trying to get closer to news sources by moving their buttocks as “mopping the floor.” There still are not enough seats in front of the conference room, and reporters say it is easier to type what politicians say on their laptops in that position than otherwise.

The weird practice — reporters sitting on the floor, typing what a political heavyweight says, and sending a story — still continues. But that is wrong. If reporters sit down on the ground and their interviewees stand, the equal footing between the two groups collapses. Simply writing down what others say is what stenographers do, not journalists. Reporters are obligated to deal with any news sources on the same eye level.

Some may wonder if there’s any need to adhere to such formalities. But action becomes a habit and habit becomes an individual’s values. I have never seen journalists sitting on the floor, looking up their news sources, and typing what they say in their laptops whether in Washington or Tokyo. Such visual impact certainly played a part in giving birth to the insulting moniker for reporters — “trash journalists” — in Korea.

Last month, 10 lawmakers from the Democratic Party (DP) sat down on the sidewalk before the House of Councilors in Tokyo, waved flags, and started to sing what sounded like a campaign song of civic groups. After a female lawmaker led the chant, Rep. Park Beom-gye, a former justice minister, joined the chorus. The lawmakers boasted that they let the whole world know the problems with Tokyo’s plan to discharge the contaminated Fukushima wastewater, together with Japan’s opposition party.

But it was far from the truth. Katsuya Okada, secretary general of the Democratic Party of Japan, warned Rep. Tomoko Abe for having attended a joint press conference with the Korean lawmakers. Rep. Fumitake Fujita, secretary general of the Japan Restoration Party, went so far as to ask, “How could a Japanese lawmaker be drawn into a campaign by Korean activists?” The 10 DP lawmakers from Korea have all of a sudden turned into “activists” to provoke controversy in Japan.

One month later in Korea, four DP lawmakers, including Rep. Park, the former justice minister, sat before the entrance of the Suwon District Prosecutors’ Office to protest its chief prosecutor’s refusal to meet them over its investigation of Lee Hwa-young, former deputy governor of Gyeonggi under Lee Jae-myung, now the DP chairman. After Justice Minister Han Dong-hoon attacked the lawmakers’ protest for being “an act on par with the obstruction of justice,” Rep. Park Ju-min, another DP lawmaker, called it "an insult to legislators.” Really? The lawmaker even does not care how the voters would perceive his distorted comment.

Let’s think about all these episodes calmly. Are we — the press and the politicians — really doing what the people want? First, the media have started to summon Cho Min — the daughter of the controversial former justice minister Cho Kuk — after her father’ name has nearly disappeared from the spotlight after bisecting our society over the corruption involving his daughter’s illicit admission into a medical school, his power abuse and other types of corruption when he served as the guardian of justice under former President Moon Jae-in. Now, the press reports the daughter’s scribblings on Facebook as if they were significant issues for our society. The endless squabbles by political panelists on television, terrestrial or cable, bring audiences into the ring of wasteful politics at any moment of the day.

When you have dinner over some drinks in a foreign country, topics vary from literature to cutting-edge technology. But in Korea, politics and gossip dominate the talk wherever you go. The press and the politicians must be held accountable for that. If DP lawmakers stage a protest before the Diet and the prosecutors’ office for the right cause, they should be cheered, not jeered.

The declining approval rating of the DP — regardless of the ominous signs for the government such as the alleged change of the route in the planned construction of a highway to favor the family of the first lady and the deepening public concerns about the Fukushima wastewater — shows the way the party behaves does not deserve praise from the public. Instead, people regard DP lawmakers as a group bordering on radical civic activists. The time has come for the media and political circles to wake up.