hankyoreh

Tomoomi Mori, visiting professor at Ritsumeikan University, holds up his new book, “Korean Journalism and the Democratization Movement in the Press: The Hankyoreh Newspaper in Sociology and History.”

“I think that the Hankyoreh’s next challenge is to develop and expand the role of the progressive press outside of Korea and into the whole of East Asia,” said Tomoomi Mori, visiting professor at Ritsumeikan University, during a telephone interview with the Hankyoreh on Nov. 1.

Mori, 40, is the author of a book titled “Korean Journalism and the Democratization Movement in the Press: The Hankyoreh Newspaper in Sociology and History.” Recently published by Nihon Keizai Hyouronsha, the book represents the first major treatise on the Hankyoreh.

Mori has been researching the Hankyoreh since 2003, when he was in university. “These days, the presentation of South Korean politics and society inside Japan seems more problematic than before. In particular, I think there’s a lack of understanding of Korea on its own terms. To be sure, there are good-quality texts, both for academic readers and the general public, about [Korean] politics and society, but there are few serious studies of its journalism,” Mori said, when asked about his reasons for writing the book.

“The Hankyoreh has been the subject of attention in Japanese society from the time of its foundation in 1988, but there have been few thorough-going interpretations of the newspaper. It’s impossible to understand the Hankyoreh without understanding Korea’s contemporary history.”

It took Mori about 10 years to write his book, which he completed in August. He adapted the book from his doctorate dissertation at Doshisha University in Kyoto.

His interest in the Hankyoreh dates back even further, of course. “While volunteering on the Peace Boat [a Japanese NGO] in 2001, I visited Pyongyang and Seoul over three days and learned about the history of the Korean Peninsula. During my studies, I read ‘The Fighting Newspaper: 12 Years of the Hankyoreh’ [published by Iwanami Shoten], which piqued my interest about the Korean press. I felt I needed to learn about Korea’s contemporary history and the press democratization movement,” he said.

Over the course of his research, Mori says, his focus turned toward the Hankyoreh, the newspaper whose publication represented one of the successes of that movement.

Mori’s research brought him to Korea, where he spent a year studying as part of his doctoral program. In November 2008, Mori joined a volunteer group that translated about 10 Hankyoreh articles every day to bring the newspaper to the attention of Japanese readers. Mori joined Junjo Somei, a Japanese expat in Korea, and others for this project. The blog they operated, called “Hankyoreh Sarangbang,” was the precursor of the newspaper’s Japanese language edition.

Mori also translated “Journey to Hope,” a history of the Hankyoreh’s first two decades that was published in 2008, 20 years after its foundation. The Japanese edition of the book was published in 2012 under the title “The Invincible Hankyoreh: 20 Years of Press Democratization Supported by the Korean Public.”

That was the first time the history of a single Korean media organization was translated for Japanese readers. “Mainstream Japanese newspapers frequently quote articles by the conservative Korean press. I wanted to make Japanese aware of a different point of view,” Mori recalled.

Amid rapid changes in the Korean media landscape, Mori says that the Hankyoreh needs to change, too. In the book’s preface, Mori says, “Now that the Hankyoreh has moved from an alternative newspaper to a mainstream newspaper, it needs to take its ideas and activities to the next level.”

“It’s important to maintain its founding principle of focusing on the Korean people. But it also needs to pay closer attention to East Asia. It’s important for the peoples of East Asia to move from reconciliation to confidence-building, and from solidarity to a loose community. I think the Hankyoreh should work on elaborating that concept and drafting the outline of how it could be implemented,” he suggested.

Mori said that the Hankyoreh also has an important role to play in the fight against “fake news.” “A major danger of ‘post truth’ is that it denies the very existence of journalism. Conservatives and progressives ought to be on the same side in the fight to protect journalism, but unfortunately there’s a strong tendency in Korea for even the crisis in journalism to separate people along ideological lines,” he said.

“Post truth” is the idea that emotions and personal ideology tend to have a greater impact on public opinion than objective facts.

“The Hankyoreh needs to fight against fake news. It’s up to the mainstream press to take action against fake news, and I think the Hankyoreh could be the newspaper that’s best-suited for that role,” Mori said.

“The Hankyoreh doesn’t have its own journalism institute. Newspapers need to conduct their own research into journalism. While the Hankyoreh needs to uphold the spirit of the press democratization movement, with its background in contemporary Korean history, I think it also needs to settle on its mission and role as a global newspaper while moving to the next level as a press organization.”

By Cho Ki-weon, Tokyo correspondent

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