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| Image: Flicke User - Republic of Korea |
By John Power
Local coverage surprisingly overlooks some serious espionage allegations.
On Tuesday, New Zealand Prime Minister John Key wrapped up a three-day visit to South Korea during which he signed a free trade agreement. As might be expected, the South Korean media covered the visit, focusing mainly on the removal of tariffs and New Zealand’s cooperation in denuclearizing North Korea.
But there was one striking omission from the local media coverage: revelations that the New Zealand authorities had spied on a former South Korean trade minister when he was a candidate for the top job at the World Trade Organization.
Within a day of Key’s arrival in Seoul on Sunday, the New Zealand Herald and The Intercept reported that the Government Communications Security Bureau had monitored emails and other Internet traffic referring to the nine candidates for WTO director general in 2013, including South Korea’s Bark Tae-ho. The reports alleged that the GCSB had used the NSA’s XKEYSCORE eavesdropping program to look at the communications in an apparent attempt to secure the job for the New Zealand candidate, Tim Groser. The reports referred to a secret XKEYSCORE document in support of the claims.
But in South Korea, news outlets almost completely ignored the revelations, even as they coincided with the prime minister’s visit. No major local media outlet made any reference to the spying angle. The only apparent mention came at the bottom of a single article on one local news site.
Read the full story at The Diplomat