A journalist is someone who records. A judge is someone who divides cases, a prosecutor is someone who examines cases, and the police are a system that guards and examines.

Looking only at the Hanja characters, the meanings of these four professions are simple. A journalist is a recorder, a judge is a decider, a prosecutor is an inspector, and police are guards.

However, a liberal democracy no longer grants authority based solely on job titles. The name is just the starting point. Today's citizens ask what that name actually does.

Among these four professions, the journalist is the one who first and most closely interfaces with a liberal democracy. The police act after an incident occurs, prosecutors organize accusations into legal language, and judges make the final decision.

However, before that, it is largely the journalist's role to make society aware of what the problem is, and to bring hidden facts to light in the public sphere.

Therefore, freedom of expression and freedom of the press are not auxiliary mechanisms of liberal democracy, but its first chapter. If people cannot speak and society cannot know, elections, trials, and legislatures will ultimately be left with only shells.

However, as internet culture has fully emerged onto the societal forefront, the names of these professions have begun to transform strangely.

Journalists became "giregi" (a derogatory term for journalists), judges became "panse," prosecutors became "geomse," and police became "jjapsae." This was not mere abuse. As information became universal and news, judgments, investigations, and on-site responses were compared and shared in real-time, distrust towards authoritative professions solidified into mocking language.

Professions that were respected based on their authority have now become professions evaluated by their function. The crumbling of the name first means the crumbling of trust first.

Among these, the disparagement of journalists is particularly symbolic.

Journalists were originally recorders, but the public in the internet age no longer sees them solely as recorders. They ask what was verified before asking what was written.

When false reports, plagiarism, selective silence, and biased framing are repeated, journalists are perceived not as recorders, but as distributors of corrupted information.

Therefore, today's journalists must be redefined not as simple recorders, but as people who verify facts and help citizens make judgments. Reliability over breaking news, context over assertions, and verification over conviction must become the modern meaning of a journalist.

It is the same for judges.

Judges are no longer trusted simply because they wear judicial robes. If they cannot explain their judgments in a way that citizens can understand, their verdicts become documents of distrust, not documents of authority.

Prosecutors should be gatekeepers of the state's penal power, not vanguards of punishment.

The police should be the front line of citizen safety, not the face of enforcement. All four professions have transitioned from past authoritative roles to today's responsible roles.

However, in this transition, the axis that should not waver first is still the journalist. This is because if recording and verification collapse, judgment, punishment, and guarding will inevitably falter as well.

The problem is that Korean society is making this first chapter increasingly unstable.

Freedom House assessed Korea as a country with "partially free" internet even in 2025, and its detailed 2024 report identified criminal defamation, aggravated punishment for online defamation under the Information and Communications Network Act, and provisions for punishing the spread of false information related to the May 18th Democratic Uprising as legal structures that suppress online expression.

The 2025 summary also noted that journalists and media organizations continued to face defamation charges due to their reporting, and that government regulatory pressure and criminal investigations aligned with a trend of suppressing critical reporting.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) issued a similar warning. RSF ranked Korea 61st out of 180 countries in its 2025 World Press Freedom Index and stated in a statement released during the presidential election campaign that there has been ongoing political pressure and attacks on the media in South Korea in recent years.

The reality that South Korea, once hailed as a leader in press freedom in East Asia, is now stuck in a "problematic" zone is by no means trivial.

Concerns from foreign media and international press organizations point in the same direction.

AP reported on December 24, 2025, that the National Assembly led by the Democratic Party of Korea had passed a bill allowing up to five times punitive damages for reporting "false or fabricated information," and that journalist groups and civil liberty advocacy organizations had warned this could deter reporting critical of public officials, politicians, and large corporations.

Furthermore, IPI stated in early January 2026 that the so-called "fake news law" could restrict the media's watchdog function and demanded a human rights impact assessment before its implementation in July.

The core issue is not an individual case.

What international organizations and press groups are concerned about is the structure in Korea where regulations on online aggravation, historical content punishment provisions, and false information are continuously layered on top of an already strong criminal defamation system.

When journalists and media organizations are repeatedly subjected to criminal complaints, searches, and investigative pressure, the effect is not limited to simply blocking false information. Media outlets begin self-censorship, sources remain silent, and critical reporting becomes a dangerous option.

When criticism of power is addressed not with refutation and evidence, but with the language of investigation, legislation, and punishment, the public sphere degenerates from a forum for discussion into a controlled area.

The provisions for punishing content related to May 18th hold particular symbolic significance here. The stronger the state's will to protect a certain historical truth, the more rigorous its method of protection must be.

However, if criminal punishment begins to be established as the primary means of historical debate, the scope of its application can easily expand. Today it might be May 18th, tomorrow it could be a different historical event, and the day after, it could be a political narrative that power institutions find sensitive.

Therefore, in a liberal democracy, historical protection and freedom of expression are not conflicting values, but values that must be reconciled through more rigorous evidence and higher public standards.

The moment the state easily resorts to penal power to protect a narrative, freedom becomes an exception rather than a defense.

The state of press freedom in Korea today is not simply a matter of whether media organizations are having a hard time.

If we reflect on why the name "journalist" has been reduced to a language of ridicule, the answer is quite clear.

Citizens have access to more information, can compare it more quickly, and can monitor it more directly. This change has demanded accountability from the media.

However, state power is responding not with the language of accountability, but with the language of punishment. What is needed to correct critical reporting is more verification, more vigorous refutation, and more transparent disclosure of facts, not the immediate casting of a shadow of criminal procedure.

The reason we have refrained from legal action against some media outlets that labeled the "Arrest of Chinese Spy Ring" case as fake news, as well as the Democratic Party of Korea and Lee Jae-myung's side, is clear.

It is because we believed that the media's duty lies not in prioritizing the language of punishment, but in revealing conclusions with facts and evidence in the arena of verification. We have adhered to the principle that verification precedes lawsuits, and proof precedes stigmatization.

Ultimately, the health of a liberal democracy hinges on this one question.

How does power deal with criticism? Does it refute, explain, or suppress it through investigation, legislation, and punishment?

Freedom of expression is freedom because it protects even uncomfortable speech. Freedom of the press is freedom because it protects even articles that power dislikes. If these disappear, all that remains are managed information and a controlled public sphere.

This incident, which includes the search and seizure of Hanmi Ilbo and the unreasonable request for an arrest warrant against CEO Heo Gyeom, will be recorded as a representative example threatening liberal democracy today.

When power begins to pressure critical media through criminal procedures, it is not just one media outlet that collapses. Freedom of expression and freedom of the press, the first chapters of liberal democracy, are shaken together.