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The title card for a documentary by German broadcasters ARD and ZDF on the abrupt declaration of martial law in December 2024, titled “Inside Korea - State Crisis in the Shadow of China and North Korea,” which was aired on March 6, 2025. (from the Phoenix website)

A controversial documentary on Korea’s political situation after December’s martial law debacle aired by German broadcasters is coming under fire for its bias in presenting only the arguments made by far-right figures, including those regarding election fraud conspiracy theories. 

A South Korean coalition of human rights and media organizations is calling strongly for an official apology from the broadcasters, stating, “The whole world is watching that such a biased and distorted documentary is being broadcast by German public broadcasters.”

The Network for Freedom of Expression Against Hatred and Censorship, known as “Article 21 Net,” a coalition involving OpenNet, the National Union of Media Workers and Cultural Action, released a statement Thursday about a documentary titled “Inside Korea — State Crisis in the Shadow of China and North Korea” (“Inside Südkorea — Staatskrise im Schatten von China und Nordkorea”) that had been released on the website of Phoenix, a TV channel operated by German public broadcasters ARD and ZDF, on Feb. 25. 

“Inside Korea,” which was set to be aired on Thursday, is a documentary that purports to provide insights into South Korea’s political crisis following President Yoon Suk-yeol’s sudden invocation of martial law on Dec. 3, 2024, but takes its cues almost exclusively from figures associated with the far right. 

Still from the documentary by German broadcasters ARD and ZDF on the abrupt declaration of martial law in December 2024, titled “Inside Korea - State Crisis in the Shadow of China and North Korea,” which was aired on March 6, 2025. (from the Phoenix website)

The documentary introduces a far-right YouTuber as a “journalist” who claims that the “martial law declaration was legal and constitutional,” and features “experts” who evangelize election fraud conspiracy theories and consider Yoon’s impeachment trial to be unconstitutional. The film, which runs around half an hour in length, also presents allegations of election interference by China and North Korea as though they are grounded in fact.

The documentary, meanwhile, fails to present counterarguments to these claims, nor does it so much as touch upon the ransacking of the Seoul Western District Court by far-right Yoon supporters. 

Article 21 Net slammed the documentary as “an extremely biased and distorted broadcast that will further endanger the current crisis of Korean democracy,” declaring, “We have seen many news reports and documentaries from foreign media covering important situations in Korea, but we have never seen content that is so close to misinformation.”

“This documentary predominantly features claims by [a] few far-right groups that the majority of Korean people consider to be false and delusional. It repeatedly presents narratives that inflate the crisis of Korean democracy based on the President’s unacceptable self-justifications, statements from far-right supporters that echo the president, interviews with unreliable experts presented to support these statements, and narratives that exaggerate the political conflict as a crisis of Korean democracy,” the groups wrote in a statement, condemning the broadcasters for having “abandoned the basic principles of journalism.”

Still from the documentary by German broadcasters ARD and ZDF on the abrupt declaration of martial law in December 2024, titled “Inside Korea - State Crisis in the Shadow of China and North Korea,” which was aired on March 6, 2025. (from the Phoenix website)

The network pointed out that the biggest problem of the documentary is how it “revived Europe’s Cold War-era prejudices” about East Asia. 

“The documentary views the current situation in Korea through a dichotomous Cold War framework of ‘secret political alliance between China, North Korea, and the far-lefts of South Korea’ versus the ‘alliance of US, Japan, and the ruling party,’” the Korean groups said. 

Such a framework buttresses the myth that communist forces from China and North Korea meddled in South Korea’s elections to take control of the country, the groups warned, saying that such misrepresentations could prompt European viewers to deem Korea an “underdeveloped democracy” that has remained largely stagnant since the country’s liberation from Japanese colonization.

“This documentary will be used as propaganda to legitimize the violence of far-right groups that undermine the foundations of Korean democracy,” the coalition stated, expressing concerns that this propaganda would “revive” Nazism in Korea. The statement mentioned Jürgen Hinzpeter, an ARD correspondent who was the first foreign journalist to cover the Gwangju Democratic Uprising in 1980, lambasting ARD for “denying the history of the Korean democratic struggle” that Hinzpeter risked his life to cover.

Article 21 Net plans to distribute an English version of its statement to foreign journalists.

By Park Kang-su, staff reporter

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]