March 28, 2024
Opinion

Why the UN’s damning human rights report wasn’t a news priority in South Korea

Observer says South Korean media places increased focus on domestic issues, for good reason

The news priorities of international and South Korean media organizations are strikingly different at times. A case in point would be Monday of last week, when the UN released its damning report on human rights abuses in North Korea. On the BBC News Online's world news front page, the UN report was the top story.

On the website of the South Korean news agency Yonhap, by contrast, the same report was in fifth position on the front page. For Yonhap the top two stories were the breaking news about a fatal building collapse in Kyongju and the terrorist attack in Egypt which had killed two South Korean tourists the day before. Meanwhile, for the BBC the Egypt story was buried deep on its Asia news page and the Kyongju story had not yet appeared anywhere on the site (although it did later).

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