This text records the author’s strong sense of discomfort and distrust while watching NHK’s “International Report” on June 5, 2019.
Through criticism of a feature on President Trump, another feature on Korean society, and doubts about the program’s presenters and production structure, it preserves the author’s candid impression of NHK’s editorial stance at the time.

2019-06-05
Until just now I had been watching NHK’s International Report, but as I watched, I began to feel sick, wondering what sort of standpoint the people producing this program actually held.

Until just now I had been watching NHK’s International Report, but as I watched, I began to feel sick, wondering what sort of standpoint the people producing this program actually held.
First, under the name of a feature, they aired what struck me as shallow criticism of President Trump, poorly researched and one-sided.
At a level even a kindergartener could understand, they brought on a person introduced as a soybean farmer.
According to the report, he had been a Republican supporter since his father’s generation and had voted for President Trump.
But he was said to oppose the present U.S.-China trade war, and to have appeared many times in The New York Times.
From that point on, the whole thing already seemed suspicious to me.
The very structure, in which a genuine Republican supporter repeatedly appears in The New York Times to criticize a Republican president, seemed altogether too contrived.
China, I believe, must now be mobilizing to the fullest all those whom it has long placed inside the United States, and all those under its influence, in order to carry out operations aimed at defeating President Trump.
It was a feature that, in my view, strongly suggested that NHK was siding with China.
The next feature was a truly trivial one, about a novel written by a Korean woman that had become a bestseller in Korea.
They reported, as though they had only now discovered it, that Korea is a Confucian society and a country marked by male superiority over women, and the female caster made comments such as, “I read the Japanese edition and there were so many parts I could relate to… I’m 28 myself…,” which, for a Japanese viewer, felt like the sort of remark that makes one want to say, “Please spare me.”
As for the male caster responding to her, ever since he had taken over I had thought he gave off a rather strange impression, and I heard that before becoming a caster on this program he had been stationed at the Seoul bureau.
That left me utterly speechless.
On top of that, the woman said to be the director who made this feature appeared, speaking Japanese with a strange accent.
I imagine that all perceptive viewers watching were left stunned and dumbfounded.
What country’s broadcasting station is this, and what kind of broadcasting station is it?
I do not think I can watch this program anymore.
To watch such a thing is a complete waste of time and of life.
Enough of that, enough of that.
From tomorrow onward, I should either go straight to bed, or read the monthly magazines and books that ought to be read.