With the newspaper business declining, the professional ethos of journalists seems to be strong in South Korea. One needs strong conviction to keep with the profession, especially when the financial reward is not as strong as before and social esteem for the profession is not as strong either. Reporters’ communicative efficacy in the newsroom is solid, and when editorial or journalistic rights are infringed upon by external or internal factors, they often show solidarity across firms as a professional group. Union activities are also strong.
Organisations such as the Korea Press Foundation provides a fair amount of quality education and professional forums for journalists to network and learn new skills, such as data science and visualisation. The foundation is also active in publishing professional texts or reports. Prominent reports from global organisations such as Reuters Institute are often quickly translated into Korean.
Though cynicism towards the news media is prevalent in South Korea, public debate on journalism is ample. Although being controversial in its political stance, public broadcaster KBS has regular hour-long programmes on journalism critiques.
