South Korean government causes uproar with decision to defund USKI

Josh Stanton’s call for a redaction from the Chosun Ilbo (taken from Twitter)

The Moon administration is facing accusations of censorship from critics in Washington, D.C.

“South Korean government censors US think tank.”

“Washington furious over ‘Moon administration blacklist.’”

These were the titles of articles on page 1 and 3 of the Apr. 9 edition of the Chosun Ilbo newspaper, claiming the South Korean government had pressured for the replacement of Jae H. Ku, director of the US-Korea Institute (USKI) at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). The claims surrounding Ku, who is known to be close with conservatives, concern a decision by the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy (KIEP), a state think tank, to cut off budget support for USKI.

An exchange between Frank Jannuzi and Josh Stanton that appeared on Twitter

Written by Washington bureau chief Kang In-seon, the articles described Washington foreign affairs experts as being shocked and critical of Seoul’s use of “outside pressure” to drive out institute officials seen as being “off message.”

But some of the quotes from the articles are drawing attention for exaggerating what the experts actually said to suit the Chosun Ilbo’s own stance. In one of the pieces, attorney and North Korea sanctions expert Joshua Stanton is quoted as having written in a piece titled “South Korea’s ‘Liberal’ Government Is Trying to Censor the North Korea Policy Debate in America” that a complaint should be made over the KIEP’s attempts to exert influence and offering to recommend lawyers. Stanton immediately took to Twitter to demand a correction.

“Thank you for your interest in my post as freekorea.us,” Stanton wrote to the Chosun Ilbo’s English edition account, before adding, “Would you kindly ask the editors to correct [certain] misquotes in your story citing it?”

Stanton identified the two misquotes as follows: “1. I did not call for KIEP's prosecution. 2. I did not offer to introduce anyone to a lawyer.”

A link to Josh Stanton’s original post criticizing the Moon administration for engaging in academic censorship (taken from Twitter)

As a result, the Chosun Ilbo apparently corrected the article on its website. The sections that Stanton called out appear in the print version of the newspaper but are missing on the online version.

In the same article, the Chosun Ilbo quoted Frank Jannuzi, president of the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation, as saying that he “[commends USKI chairman Robert] Gallucci and [SAIS dean Vali] Nasr for defending academic freedom.” While the article represents Jannuzi as criticizing the actions of the South Korean government, the larger context of the tweet suggests that the paper actually only represented one portion of Jannuzi’s viewpoint.

“At Mansfield, We [sic] insist on academic freedom. I commend Josh [Stanton] for sounding alarm. But I’m not going to accuse the Government of Korea or anyone else of ‘censoring’ me if they don’t want to pay me to produce scholarship,” Jannuzi wrote in the same tweet.

Even though the overall thrust of Jannuzi’s tweet is rebutting Stanton’s tweet that “S. Korea’s ‘liberal’ government is trying to censor the N. Korea policy debate in America,” the first part of Jannuzi’s tweet was cherry-picked as criticism of censorship by the South Korean government.

This suggests that the Chosun Ilbo twisted the words of American scholars to criticize the Moon administration for supposedly using a blacklist, even though the USKI’s budget execution has been an issue since the previous conservative administration.

By Park Min-hee, staff writer

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