Today, the Korean media was heat up to broadcast the FTA agreement between US and Korea has been passed the US congress. This agreement was pending since the Bush adminiatration.
While South Korea's president Myung Bak Lee is visiting Washington D.C., the US congress passed the FTA with South Korea yesterday. While the Korean government announced that the FTA agreement with US will be the win-win agreement for both nations, it has been a hot potato issue within Korea, especailly, between conservertives (pro-America) and progressives (anti-America). Actually Many Koreans are thinking that this will be less beneficial to Korean economy being occupied by American companies.
As Thussu mentioned, lieberalizing trade agreement including FTA is the global phenomenon. There were many resistence to this kind of agreement but the globalizationa flow make nations to sign on the agreement in order to grab the benefits from the FTA. While there is huge argument whether this agreement is an instrument of Western countries to expand their wealth or not, there are certain disadvantages to the nations that avoid to be members of agreement.
Regarding FTA between Korea and US, watching the media's perspecitve is really interesting. While the Washington Post posted the welcome dinner story for President Lee hosted by the Obama government after the successful FTA agreement discussion, the Korean progressive journals describes the FTA with US is the threat to Korea's economy. Interestingly, the US newspapers also introduce FTA: “These agreements will support tens of thousands of jobs across the country for workers making products stamped with three proud words: Made in America,” They are more focusing on the job, I think: interesting! comparing to the "occupying the Wal Street" it seems that they are concerning job availablities in US.
In South Korea, conservative journals (3 of major Korean newspapers are regarded as conservative lines: we call them 'Cho-Chun-Dong') were criticized that they only deals the FTA news in positive way which are pro to the Korean government.
While I was searching for this FTA coverage, I realized that the raw source for FTA agreement is hard to access for ordinary person which means that the media is the regular medium to access this kind of information. In other words, media should be objective to the news for conveying it to the people. By the way, who decide what is objective or not?
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