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Hello. This is another educational article, meant to help fans become better at understanding how the media works and where they can go to in order to get reliable information in order to fact-check or verify reporting on an issue. The goal is to build better news literacy and a more informed fan community. (For the first article in this series, see here.)

Disclaimer:Under normal conditions, this article is not really necessary or relevant to allkpop, as this place is meant to be a fansite to share celebrity news and gossip. Accuracy and fact-checkingin reporting is not really that important for entertainment news(and some would argue that rumours, gossip and exaggeration actually create a more vibrant fandom experience). However, because of the recent criminal cases involving multiple celebrities, situations are arising which need both entertainment industry knowledge as well as in-depth knowledge of legal/political/criminal procedures. Which the allkpop staff writers may not necessarily have the training or experience to deal with. (Sort of like hiring a cheerleader to talk about sports and acrobatic techniques, but then asking them to do lawyer's work. In another language.) In these kinds of legal/criminal/political issues, it becomes important for people to trace the sources of information to get accurate interpretations of news, and so this article is being written specifically to provide people with a good picture of the media in Korea and where they can go to verify information they get from English-language fansites.

1) What's the Korean news environment like?

There are four main sources from which Koreans can get their news: online portals (similar to Yahoo! News), TV channels, traditional print newspapers, or social media.  The most popular news source in Korea today are the local online portals like Naver, Daum and nate, which 84% of people in Korea use for news [1]. This is followed by 74% of people using TV for news, 29% for social media, and only 25% of people in S. Korea who use print newspapers for news in 2018 [1]. 

Online Portals & Translations

The majority of news you get from sites like allkpop and other entertainment blogs are translated from news found on online portals. The top three online news portals are Naver, Daum and nate, with Naver especially holding the largest market share (65%) [1]. Now it's important to recognise that these online portals are actually news aggregators - they don't write or report on news themselves, they just collect news that other people have written / reported, and put it all in one place for people to read/watch. So even though the source website cited in an English article may be Naver, the actual report may be written by a news agency such as Chosun Ilbo, Sports Chosun, Sports Seoul, or some other organization. And Naver then collects those articles and features them on its' newsfeed. 

However, not every news agency can publish whatever news they want on these online portals - Naver and Daum formed a committee made up of industry reps and media associations who decide which news agencies are on the 'approved' list to be featured on their platforms, and to filter out 'clickbait' or advertising articles. [1] This in turn has led to some suspicions that the (unelected) committee is deliberately acting more in the interest of the platforms than the actual news publishers, and controlling what stories the public sees [see 2, 3 & 4 for details; not going to cover it here].

Anyway, here are the online news portals for you to check out for yourself:

• News on Naver can be found in three places: Naver newsstand shows you the daily headlines and front page news of about 52 newspapers. Naver newsfeed shows you all news articles they have collected, sorted by topics (usually, the stories that interest allkpop readers will be found under the 'Social' tab... Google translate the site). Naver also has a dedicated section for trending entertainment news, with daily rankings of the most popular or trending news (similar to what allkpop is doing with this upvote/downvote system.) Some fan-run newsblogs such as Daily Naver make it a point to translate the top trending news from Naver into English.

• News on Daum is mainly found in the Media section (again, Society tab would be best place to find celebrity-related news). Daum is primarily known in the Kpop community because of its fancafes, but unfortunately I don't know of any sources that regularly translate Daum news into English, so Google translate is your best friend here. Most likely they will be duplicate sources with Naver, since Daum and Naver draw from the same news agencies mostly. However, Daum's popular/trending news stories section has one distinct advantage over other portals: they have a calendar which allows you to look up popular news stories on different dates in the past. (Which can be extremely useful if trying to trace previous reporting on a issue, or the history of a case.)

• News from Nate can be found in their news section. They have a specific section for Entertainment news as well, with real-time rankings of news articles as a sidebar. However, Nate tends to be quite popular for hosting the Pann forums, which allows young people and netizens to share their opinions of articles with each other, give comments and upvotes / downvotes. (This is the source of a lot of "Netizens React" type of articles.) Another fan-run blogsite, Pann-Choa, translates some of the Pann chatter into English.

Newspapers

Online portals like the above mainly draw from newspapers with articles published online. There are over 100 news agencies in Korea, some of whom publish at a national level, others only regionally. Some have daily news, others publish on a weekly or even monthly schedule. In general, however, print newspapers in Korea are struggling to convert successfully to online news, so the websites of the individual news organizations may not be the best [1]. As such, it may be hard to filter them all. I'm not going to post a comprehensive list here [see this if you want], just highlight a few more well-respected and established newspapers so that you'll recognise their names if they appear as cited sources in an article:

• The 'Big 3' newspapers:
  • The Chosun Ilbo (translated: "Joseon Daily") is one of the oldest newspapers in Korea (founded 1920) and has the largest national circulation as well as the most online readers [5, 6]. They have both a Korean website and an English website. (There are different articles featured on each language's site though - it's not simply the same stories published in two different languages. The English-language site tends to show a lot more positive stories about Korea to its' international audience.) They generally have a conservative bent in their reportage. Sports Chosun is their sports and entertainment tabloid publication.
      
  • The Dong-A Ilbo (translated: "East Asia Daily") was also founded 1920 and is one of the national newspapers. They've partnered up internationally with The Times (U.K.), The New York Times (U.S.), The People's Daily (China), and The Asahi Shimbun (Japan) [7]. They have a Korean website and an English website. They also are considered a conservative newspaper. Sports DongA is their sports and entertainment tabloid publication.
      
    
  • The JoongAng Ilbo (translated: "Centre Daily") was founded 1965 and is the third of the three largest newspapers in Korea. They're also one of the three organizations to publish daily newspapers in English. They have a Korean website and an English Website. Their political leanings are centre-right (i.e. slightly conservative).
      
    
• The Liberal Alternative:
  • The Hankyoreh (translated: "Korean Nation" or "One Nation") is the main newspaper for liberal views in Korea. Mainly founded in 1988 by dissident journalists who were purged from existing news organizations that were heavily-controlled by the authoritarian government [8]. They have a Korean website and an English website. 
    
    
• The Business Newspapers:
  • The Maeil Business Newspaper and Hankyung Economic Daily are the two biggest business newspapers in Korea. These are basically the equivalent of the Wall Street Journal. In general, you probably won't find much celebrity gossip here (although Maeil's English website also has a Hallyu section), but reports about the entertainment industry's business performance, financial analysis of certain companies and/or financial crime news might make the cut.
      
    
• English-Language Korean Newspapers:
  • There are three newspapers which publish printed news in English daily, and who also have websites online. These are The Korea Times, The Korea Herald, and the Korea JoongAng Daily.
    

• A note about Dispatch: Dispatch is a paparazzi tabloid. Its' main focus is entertainment gossip and celebrity scandals. Their investigative reports are mainly done to stir sh*t up in the entertainment industry and uncover stuff for celebrity scandals. Don't rely on them for responsible news reporting - they're mainly interested in 'juicy' stories and sensationalism. They may be completely correct in their investigations, but just keep in mind that their primary objective isn't to present the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth - but rather to get you, the reader, to click on the story link. So they may leave out the boring but important stuff that presents a more accurate picture of the situation, in favour of presenting a more 'exciting' story with only half the facts.

TV Broadcasts

Separate from written news is of course TV broadcasts. Similar to newspapers, there are a lot of different TV broadcasting channels and companies in Korea [9]. However, there are only 4 nationwide television networks: one educational network (EBS), and three general ones (KBS, MBC and SBS). Of the three general networks, KBS is the national public broadcast service funded by the government (basically Korea's equivalent of BBC in the U.K.). MBC is funded by advertisements, but owned by a non-profit NGO (The Foundation of Broadcast Culture) that was deliberately set up to separate them from KBS and government influence. SBS is owned by private corporations and funded mainly by advertising commercials. Each of the three national networks has their own news divisions: KBS news, MBC news, SBS news.

There are also a number of cable TV broadcast networks/channels which are owned by news agencies and have news broadcast programs. These include:

• JTBC, owned by JoongAng Ilbo (one of the 'Big 3' news agencies above)
• TV Chosun, owned by Chosun Ilbo (another Big 3 news agency)
• Channel A, owned by DongA Ilbo (the third Big 3 news agency)
• MBN, owned by Maeil Business Newspaper (the financial news agency)

Lastly, there is YTN, which is aiming to be Korea's first 24-hr cable news network (similar to CNN, but not as influential). 

These are only a selection of the most important and influential news channels. You can see their relative audience reach and influence in the graphs on this page. For other TV networks and news channels, see Wikipedia.

2) How can I fact-check stuff?

Seoul National University's Press Information Institute runs a website called SNU Fact Check, which serves to check and verify facts reported on the news or online posts spreading on social media. They mainly cover political news, but there's an occasional financial/criminal investigation there that involves celebrities (e.g. Who bears financial responsibility if Seungri uses YG's corporate credit card for personal prostitution expenses?)

Concluding Remarks

This brings us to the end of this article. I hope this article gives you a clearer picture of where your news comes from within South Korea, and how it gets from news agencies, to online portals or TV broadcasts, then translators, then English websites like allkpop. Hopefully, by showing the owners / agencies behind the news, you can also see and account for potential bias in the news articles you encounter, and know where they're coming from. At the very least, you should be able to recognise certain important names of companies that are involved in bringing the news to you. As usual, comments and discussions are welcome.