AP Exclusive: U.S. News Agency Sells Reputation to North Korea for Access to Exactly No News

AP Exclusive: U.S. News Agency Sells its Former Good Name to Serve as a Propaganda Arm of the World’s Most Repressive Govt in Exchange for Access Which has Produced Exactly  No News and Undermined the Principles of a Free Press

The Associated Press Korea coverage is nothing short of a stain on, and an embarrassment to, the principles of a free press, and it is past time they  cut it out, close their bureau in Pyongyang and apologize.

And I say this as a former AP reporter (who spent a month in North Korea as their correspondent) and was the AP bureau chief in Cambodia–a country whose modern series of governments are as equally as egregious as Pyongyang, albeit minor league amateurs in comparison to the Kim family regime, simply not as accomplished or sophisticated in their thuggery.The Kim family dynastic criminal syndicate which operates currently under the protection and privileges of a recognized nation state, will make Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge look like Mother Theresa when the unspeakable truth comes out what has happened inside North Korea over the last fifty years when they inevitably will implode and collapse.

It is the unspeakable which the AP refuses to speak about–the central moral and professional mandate of its existence–in its coverage of North Korea which is, in itself, unspeakably offensive.

The AP just released an “exclusive” that the head of Google is planning a trip soon to Pyongyang, the only country in the world that has a blanket ban on use of the internet, headlined “APNewsBreak: Google exec chairman to visit NKorea”, datelined Seoul with the byline of correspondent Jean H. Lee.

What is the outrage are the several things missing from the story that violate the most basic ethical standards and AP’s own formal–and now formerly– inviolable ethics, standards and rules, a concept they have repeatedly abandoned when it comes to Korea coverage since opening a “bureau” in Pyongyang last year.

Among the most glaring absences is that there is no mention of, or reference to, any input from AP’s own Pyongyang Bureau in the story, the existence of which is a rank embarrassment and scandal in itself.

AP cut a sweetheart deal with Pyongyang to open the bureau a year ago, the contents of the written contractual arrangement they have kept as tightly secret as if they were a third world dictatorship themselves.

In the year since they opened the bureau, in a pomp and ceremony propaganda excersize orchestrated by the same North Korean government architects that are charged with maintaining  the Kim family dictatorship personality cult, not a single substantive news story has been produced from the AP Pyongyang bureau.

In fact, on numerous occasions, the AP bureaus and their competitors based in other countries have consistently first broken virtually every significant top world North Korean story and informed the world, the AP in Pyongyang remaining entirely in the dark about every important news event happening under their very nose.

These include both the April and December launches of the long range missile tests designed to carry nuclear weapons that can reach the continental U.S., which were first reported by foreign media in Tokyo, Beijing, and Seoul, to the purge of the top army commander in July, to a series of stories regarding top personal changes and policy statements.

This is because the AP bureau in Pyongyang is a wholly owned and staffed subsidiary of the the intelligence and propaganda arms of the North Korean regime. The foreign reporters can go nowhere, meet no one, or see nothing without the permission of the Pyongyang government.

In fact, the AP staffers, both the “reporters” and “photographers” are entirely handpicked by the North Korean government and widely known to be nothing short of trained operatives of the regime intelligence services.

The entire function of the bureau is to give credibility to Pyongyang’s rank manipulation of events of import and twist, suppress, or blatantly create a false narrative of the life of North Korean citizens and the conduct, actions, and intent of its brutal elite who are in power.

Regarding this story of the head of Google–a Company whose name is so firmly ubiquitous it is now both a noun and a verb absorbed irrevocably in popular international linguistic usage it is synonymous with the power, good, and importance of freedom of, and free access to, information–visiting Pyongyang, the irony is so rich it would be cut from the script of a third rate daytime TV soap opera.

Specifically, the story made only a comically brief, frightened reference in passing to the most obviously important news of the story that was so transparent one could almost visualize the AP bosses fleeing from the terror of upsetting their Pyongyang choreographers by reporting a truth: That North Korea is the only country on earth that outright bans the entire internet technology that has transformed life in literally every other piece of real estate on the planet. And failed entirely to mention the  fact that North Korean citizens are routinely imprisoned if caught using any communication devices to access information from, or communicate with people in, countries outside the borders of the worlds saddest, most repressive, most despicable gulag posing as a government and given the benefits rights and benefits of a a seat at the table of the rest of the properly organized nation states.

These are facts so ubiquitously known, that is outside the borders of North Korea, and so obvious that a good chunk of the American population that couldn’t name who their own current vice president is are aware of this news. But not if they were forced to rely on the AP for their news and information.

And in a further inexcusable breach of ethics, the AP censored the title of the job of the author of this story, editing out the fact that Ms. Jean Lee is also the “Bureau Chief” of the Pyongyang AP bureau simultaneously with her same function in Seoul–two countries formally at war with each other.

If this story involved any other country, or the AP wasn’t running fully scared of upsetting the Pyongyang authorities, they would have had input from the Pyongyang bureau, obtained some comment from a regime official or, more probably, confirmation of the very country the entire story was the subject of. But not one word. Not even the obligatory “No Pyongyang official could be reached fro comment.
In fact the sources for the entire story were all anonymous, in itself a violation of AP’s own rules requiring two named sources for publishing a story.

But the biggest outrage, among the aforementioned and several more, is buried deep in the story, in a reference  that the Google chief will be merely a member of a delegation with Kun “Tony” Namkung who they say will “also (be) leading the trip” and identified him as “an Asian affairs expert who has made numerous visits to North Korea over the past 25 years. Namkung also has been a consultant to the AP.”

AP made no reference to how Mr Namkung is “an Asian affairs expert” or what he had been in the employ of the AP “consulting” about.

In truth, Mr Namkung is a broker who makes his living taking large amounts of money from people such as the AP and Google in exchange for getting them access to meet with North Korean elite government officials and taking  a cut from business deals being negotiated. In fact, Mr. NamKung was central to the deal negotiated with the Pyongyang propaganda apparatus to open the AP bureau itself, which is so cowed, ineffectual, and counterproductive it is unwilling to shed the most mundane of light on even this what normally would be a wholly innocuous and non controversial news piece.

AP should be ashamed of themselves and quit shilling for the most offensive, oppressive dictatorship in the world and knowingly misleading their readers as part of a deal to pimp for the thugs in power in Pyongyang. Not to mention soiling the reputation of the free press, and by extension, me.

Here is a link to the just released AP story: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gqBQsr0HoEAxofMe8hK-3v5GkDcA?docId=624f23a869cc46f1be68afbc96977083