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Tim Shorrock’s Dec. 1 article from The Nation magazine

The South Korean consulate general in New York City called and emailed The Nation magazine to protest an article it had printed criticizing the Park Geun-hye administration’s demonstration suppression tactics, a journalist is claiming.

Tim Shorrock, the freelance contributor who wrote the piece, posted the allegations on his Facebook page on Dec. 4. Shorrock wrote a piece that ran in the weekly’s Dec. 1 edition titled “In South Korea, a Dictator’s Daughter Cracks Down on Labor.”

“Just got a note from my editor at The Nation saying the Park government has complained to them vociferously about this article,” Shorrock wrote on his page.

http://www.thenation.com/article/in-south-korea-a-dictators-daughter-cracks-down-on-labor/

Shorrock went on to quote the editor‘s note.

“I received an e-mail, followed up by a phone call -- actually, a spate of phone calls -- from the Korean Consulate General here in New York wanting to have a meeting, in our office, with me ‘to discuss’ [Shorrock’s] article,” it read.

“The man I talked to on the phone did not go into any details, nor did he point out -- or even claim -- that there were factual errors. Just vague words along the lines of the ‘remarkable progress Korea has made over the past four decades,’” it continued.

Following the quote, Shorrock wrote, “Thanks to the Korean netizens who immediately translated the article into Korean and spread it far & wide! Words have power. Maybe even President Obama can listen.”

The message Tim Shorrock posted to his Facebook page on Dec. 4

In his Dec. 1 article, Shorrock had delivered a scathing criticism of the Park administration’s tactics.

“Following in the footsteps of her dictator father, South Korea’s President, Park Geun-hye, is cracking down on labor and citizens groups opposed to the increasingly authoritarian policies of her ruling ‘New Frontier’ party known as Saenuri,” it read.

Noting that Park had “equated the protesters . . . to terrorists,” Shorrock described the attempted demonstration bans and militant tactics used by prosecutors and police.

“[H]er actions have brought back memories of her father, General Park Chung Hee, who seized power in 1961 and ruled with an iron hand until he was assassinated in 1979 by the director of the country‘s equivalent of the CIA,” he noted, adding that the previous regime had engaged in “savage repression of workers and students who were trying to organize for improved conditions.”

Shorrock expressed shock at the consulate’s reaction in a Dec. 6 interview with the US-based non-profit foreign press translation site thenewspro.org.https://thenewspro.org/?p=16020

“Can you imagine the US government calling up the editor to complain over an article I printed in some small magazine in South Korea?” he asked. “Is this what diplomats do?”

“They didn’t ask a single question about the facts in the article,” Shorrock continued. “It just seems like a crude attempt to intimidate the press.”

By Jung Jae-gweon, staff reporter

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