By pointing to cases in which Korean directors were assigned to NHK programs dealing with Japan-Korea issues, this essay reexamines the fairness and factual accuracy required of a public broadcaster.
With the alias system, the opacity of producers’ backgrounds, and the implications of Article 4 of the Broadcasting Act in view, it sharply questions how NHK, funded by the Japanese people, ought to structure its program-making.

2019-04-04
NHK employees should make their backgrounds clear, and aliases should be abolished.

A chapter I posted on 2019-04-03 under the title, “I am pointing out the impropriety of appointing Koreans to produce programs on Japan-Korea issues,” has entered the official hashtag ranking at No. 16 for Peru.
Just a moment ago, I came across an article on the internet that, I felt, truly expressed the value of the internet.
NHK employees should make their backgrounds clear, and aliases should be abolished.

Now that aliases themselves have become a breeding ground for crime….
Has the alias system, permitted only to certain foreign nationals, not come to produce more harm than benefit?
There may of course be various arguments on this point, but I believe that the producers involved in making programs for NHK, a public broadcaster, ought to make their backgrounds clear.
If, in a program involving the Korean Peninsula, those with roots in the peninsula are producing it, then fairness cannot be guaranteed.
Needless to say, I do not mean this in any discriminatory sense.
For example, if this were a program about relations between Japan and Peru, and the staff member in question were from Peru, there would be no problem at all.
However, although perhaps it hardly needs to be said at this point….
The history of Japan-Korea relations as described by South Korea departs markedly from historical fact.
If resident Koreans in Japan, who may have been influenced by that fabricated historical view, are involved in producing programs on Japan-Korea issues for Japan’s public broadcaster….
Then can fairness and factual accuracy really be guaranteed?
I do not think that phrasing is entirely mistaken, but what do you think?

When watching NHK, viewers do not examine the backgrounds of the producers one by one.
It is also a grave fact that the public often learns that certain people involved were resident Koreans only when they commit crimes.

Omitted in the middle.

Next, there is a director named Jeon Yong-seung.
He is a Korean director from Seoul, South Korea, and at the time he was also a director for TV Asahi’s Hōdō Station.
He became the subject of magazine reports because of a violence incident.
From an article in Shukan Shincho.

2004.05.20
[Quoted article]
Korean director Jeon Yong-seung, 35, assaulted a Japanese director at a drinking gathering.
When questioned, he brazenly replied, “It is true that there was some trouble, but it was nothing serious.”
The cause of the violence was a disagreement over how North Korea and South Korea should be reported on in the program.
He resorted to violence over a difference of opinion and showed no sign of remorse.
Viewers may therefore look forward to fair news program production by this model Korean.
[End of quotation]

The program Jeon Yong-seung handled at NHK.
He was responsible for the ETV Special series Japan and the Korean Peninsula: 2000 Years, which was part of “Project JAPAN,” over which NHK recently lost in court.
Why, exactly, must the examination of Japan-Korea issues be entrusted to a Korean director?
I find it difficult to understand.
This, too, is not a statement made from a discriminatory point of view.
Apparently this work was produced only eight years after he had come to Japan.
Which means there is no guarantee that he had freed himself from the anti-Japanese education he had continuously received since childhood in Korea.
I have only caught glimpses of opinions saying that there are anti-Japanese elements in the program, and since I have not seen the program itself, I am speaking not at the level of its actual content, but at the level of its “risk.”
I am pointing out the impropriety of appointing Koreans to produce programs on Japan-Korea issues.
NHK, above all, is a public broadcaster supported by the money of the Japanese people, and so it must be careful not to damage the national interest.
It seems that questions were already raised at the time of broadcast as to why NHK used a Korean director.
At the time this program was aired, he had apparently been in Japan for only eight years.

As for Mr. Lee Ki-hiko, the only information I can find is that he handled a program titled Revived Bonds Across the Strait: 400 Years of the Chosen Tsushinshi.
However, whether a Korean can really view the Korean embassies to Japan with a fair eye is a matter that causes me considerable unease.
The program may in the end have depicted things correctly, but one still wonders, “Why go out of the way to use a Korean, and take that risk?”
As for the “state-authorized textbooks of South Korea” through which they are educated, if one searches that phrase online, related articles can be found that reveal at least part of how falsified and distorted their contents are.

As for NHK, which continues to air programs that violate Article 4 of the Broadcasting Act….
I have dealt with that in various past articles, so I will not go into it here….
But especially in programs involving Japan-Korea issues….
I wish to point out that appointing Koreans is risky in terms of objectivity and factual accuracy.
I simply do not understand the necessity of going out of the way to appoint Koreans.