I want to take this occasion of the 10th birthday of OhmyNews to congratulate Mr. Oh Yeon Ho, the founder and CEO of OhmyNews and its present and former staff members who have contributed to the creation and development of an important new institutional form in the field of journalism.

In his original plans for the creation of OhmyNews, Mr. Oh spoke about the need for a 21st century form of journalism, and about the desire to pioneer such a journalism. (1) OhmyNews has been exploring how to create a form of journalism that builds on the open processes of the Internet and the contributions of netizens. Important to Mr. Oh when he began OhmyNews was whether the quality of journalism determined the media environment. He wanted to counter where the power and wealth of a media organization would determine the impact a news article would have.

This… weiter lesen

The US policy toward North Korea since Barack Obama has assumed the US presidency is very different from the promises of engagement which he made during his election campaign. This policy presents a striking example of the disparity between the preelection promises and the action taken thus far during the Obama presidency.

On the first day of the new administration, sanctions were authorized against three North Korean firms under the Arms Export Control Act, along with several nonproliferation executive orders. The three firms were KOMID, which had been sanctioned by other administrations,  Sino-Ki and Moksong Trading Company, which were being sanctioned for the first time. (1)

The hostile direction of Obama’s policy, however, has been signaled most clearly by the change made when the new administration failed to reappoint Christopher Hill to his position as Undersecretary of State for East Asia and the head of the US negotiation team for… weiter lesen