×

News

Newspaper executives from South Korea visit Hiroshima to exchange views

by Masayuki Ito, Staff Writer

On February 22, three executives, including Cha Seung Min, the president of the Kookje Daily News, based in Busan, South Korea, visited the headquarters of the Chugoku Shimbun, located in downtown Hiroshima. The three executives exchanged views with Yoshinori Okatani, the president of the Chugoku Shimbun, and Koji Kitamura, its editor-in-chief, on such subjects as the history and undertakings of their newspaper companies.

The two other executives from the Kookje Daily News were Moon-Seok Song, the managing editor, and Park Sang Hyun, the head of the newspaper’s Strategy Planning Office.

Mr. Okatani of the Chugoku Shimbun described what occurred in the aftermath of the atomic bombing, saying, “In the midst of the catastrophic conditions after the blast, our employees went into the streets to transmit the news orally.” Mr. Cha of the Kookje Daily News then explained, “In 1980, our newspaper was targeted when the military regime sought to suppress free speech. We were forced to stop publishing. As newspapers that have both overcome suffering, we would like to deepen our ties.”

The Kookje Daily News was founded as a national newspaper in 1947. In 1989, the newspaper restarted its publishing efforts as a regional newspaper centering on the Busan region. Today it has a daily circulation of 130,000.

The visitors from South Korea will also travel to the cities of Kure and Fukuyama in Hiroshima Prefecture, which have links to the Korean Missions to Japan that took place during the Edo period, a subject the newspaper is covering. They will return to South Korea on February 23.

(Originally published on February 23, 2013)

Archives