Police to Control Entrance of Reporters

The Korean National Police Agency (KNPA) is known to have plans to prevent journalists from entering buildings except for pressrooms and briefing rooms.

The KNPA also plans to impose guidelines limiting phone interviews to only those approved by its public relations division. The plans have raised concerns over the possible censorship of interviews.

The plans are likely to weaken the role of press to monitor the activities of the police, whose mission is to serve the public.

According to this newspaper’s interviews, the agency has a plan to install gates and automatic doors in the form of turnstiles by the end of this month at its main building and annex. The installment will cost about 270 million won.

Turnstiles will be built near the center elevator on the first floor of the main building. Automatic doors will be set up in front of two elevators located sideways and near two emergency stairs. Only people with police ID cards will be allowed to pass through the doors.

Only the first floor of the annex, where pressrooms and briefing rooms are located, automatic doors limiting the entrance will be put in place in both sides of each floor from the second to fifth floors.

Accordingly, journalists will be restricted from entering all agency buildings starting September 1.

The plans were made on June 21 after the government’s announcement that it would consolidate and close pressrooms when the controversy over violations of press freedom broke recently.

The KNPA also announced another guideline to strictly limit interviews without prior notice on August 14.

The guideline states that all interviews over the phone will only be allowed after being noticed by the public relations division in principle. The notice should include interviewers’ names and contents. An interviewer will have to inform the division of what he or she said after the conversation.

A face-to-face interview with a policeman has to get approval from the division after sending an official document. Meeting places are also limited to reception rooms placed next to briefing rooms; a policeman’s office is not a valid interview site.

In particular, the Seoul Metropolitan Police has a plan to change the existing pressrooms into briefing rooms, banning reporters from entering the building.

Professor Sohn Tae-gyu at Dankook University said, “The police are supposed to serve the public and improve public service as much as possible. Instead, they taking control of reporters and not being forthcoming with information.”

surono@donga.com