History of newspapers in Korea
Hansŏng jubo (한성주보; 漢城周報) was founded as a weekly successor paper on January 25, 1886 and was eventually shut down in 1888 due to a lack of government funds.
Correspondingly, Japanese newspapers began to emerge there for the settlers,[13] with the Jinsen Keijō Kakushū Shōhō (later called Chōsen Shinpō, unrelated to the 1881 publication) being founded there around that time.
[14] This and other Japanese papers in the 1890s often primarily wrote on news and statistics about commerce, with current events being a secondary concern.
[16] A notable population among Japanese settlers in Korea were aggressive young men often dubbed sōshi [ja] (壮士).
[11] Closely adjacent to this group was Adachi Kenzō, who founded the newspapers Chōsen Jihō in Busan in 1894, and Kanjō Shinpō in Seoul around 1894 or 1895.
For example, in February 1898, the Tongnip sinmun leaked information about the Russian Empire demanding ownership of Busan's Chŏryŏngdo from the Korean government.
The emissaries of Russia, France, and Japan protested the leak, and demanded that Gojong enact legislation to regulate Korean newspapers.
[28][10] During the 1904–1905 Russo-Japanese War, the Korean press leaked Japanese military movements and secrets on a number of occasions.
[10] Japan submitted a number of complaints to Gojong, and the Japanese military threatened to intervene and censor the papers by force.
In protest of this, they began to practice what was dubbed "brick wall newspaper" (벽돌신문) tactics, where they printed censored articles backwards.
[10] The Japanese legation, which had once held significant sway over the Korean media landscape, began making greater efforts to compete.
[29][31] In the late 1890s and early 1900s, various Japanese newspapers were founded in major urban centers, including Wonsan, Mokpo, Gunsan, and Daegu.
Park Yong-gu theorizes that their publication was meant to promote community identity and ties,[32] as well as to provide careers for Japanese immigrants.
Historian Park Yong-gu notes that this was primarily done to profit from the Korean market as well, although some articles did attempt to justify Japan's takeover of Korea.
[42] However, Park also argues that the proliferation of Korean-language articles in Japanese papers possibly negatively impacted the creation of native Korean newspapers.
Park theorized that, over time, the need for support decreased, as Japanese newspapers attracted more readers and advertisers.
It had two companion Korean-language editions published in mixed script and pure Hangul called Taehan Maeil Sinbo.
The newspaper's owner, British journalist Thomas Bethell, dodged Japanese censorship using his foreign citizenship, and sharply criticized Japan.
[50] This newspaper became the de facto publication of the Japanese resident-general and later governor-general, and held a position of prominence in Korea until its dissolution in 1945.
According to a 1909 Japanese resident-general report, they had confiscated a total of 20,947 issues of various newspapers, even those published abroad in Russia and the United States, by that point.
He was eventually found innocent, although the stress from his legal troubles possibly caused his early death in 1909 from a heart issue.
[10] In response to the protests, the Japanese colonial government changed many of its policies,[59] and eased restrictions on Korean newspapers.
[67] The One Province, One Company policy, as well as increasing restrictions on the learning and use of the Korean language,[68] contributed to significant consolidation in the newspaper market.
The only major daily Korean-language newspaper that was allowed to continue publishing was the Maeil Sinbo, and it came to financially thrive.
The following day, the Maeil Sinmun announced that the Korean prince Yi U had died "in battle"; in actuality he had been killed while commuting to work during the atomic bombing.
[71] Since Korea's independence from Japan's rule, numerous periodicals, including newspapers and magazines, have emerged in response to media oppression.
The Communist Party of Korea not only received the Gonozawa Printing Office in Sogong-dong, Seoul, which was the best facility at the time, but also recruited the publishing labor union.
[78] The Dong-A and Chosun incident occurred due to the intervention of government authorities, the press freedom protection movement, the suppression of advertisements, and labor-management conflicts.
[80] However, the company began to fire the reporters that supported Dong-A Ilbo's traditional policy of not recognizing labor unions.
[81] Jun Doo-hwan's forces, which seized power due to the December 12 incident[clarification needed], established a press team led by Lee Sang-jae at the intelligence office of the security company in early 1980, merged media companies to control the media essential to the power struggle, and dismissed journalists who were resistant or critical of the military's position.
