South Korea leader criticised for banning broadcaster from plane

Yoon previously accused MBC of damaging the country’s alliance with the United States after it released a video suggesting that he insulted U.S. Congress members following a meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden.

Journalist organisations say South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol attacked press freedoms when his office banned a TV broadcaster's crew from the press pool travelling on his Presidential plane this week for allegedly biased reporting.

Yoon previously accused MBC of damaging the country’s alliance with the United States after it released a video suggesting that he insulted U.S. Congress members following a meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden in New York in September.

Yoon’s office told MBC it wouldn’t provide the broadcaster with “reporting assistance” over his upcoming trips to Cambodia and Indonesia for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and Group of 20 meetings because of what it described as “repeated distortion and biased reporting” on diplomatic issues.

Yoon, a conservative who took office in May, doubled down on Thursday on the decision to exclude MBC reporters from his plane, saying “important national interests” were at stake. Yoon leaves for Cambodia on Friday to attend the ASEAN meetings and he will be in Indonesia the following week for the G-20 meetings. He will participate in a trilateral summit on Sunday with Mr. Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Cambodia to discuss the growing threat posed by North Korea's nuclear weapons and missile programmes.

“The reason the President uses so much taxpayer money to travel overseas is because important national interests are at stake and that is also why we have provided reporting assistance to reporters covering diplomatic and security issues,” Yoon said. “(I) hope that the decision could be understood from that perspective,” he said about leaving MBC reporters off his plane, which would exclude them from in-flight briefings and other media opportunities.

In statements provided to The Associated Press, MBC said Yoon’s office was ignoring press freedoms and democratic principles and that it would still be sending reporters to Cambodia and Indonesia on commercial flights to cover Yoon’s trip to serve the "public's right to know.”

A coalition of journalist organisations, including the Journalists Association of Korea and the National Union of Media Workers, issued a statement demanding Yoon’s office withdraw what they described as an “unconstitutional and ahistorical restriction on reporting,” and for Presidential officials involved in the decision to resign.