Month: April 2018

Life is good at NICE TV.

Staff enjoy generous benefits at the new Chinese network and their flashy building, directly inside Cambodia’s Ministry of Interior, boasts an elegant restaurant on the fifth floor with 360 degree views of the city’s political heartland.

News manager Seang Sophorn is busy directing from the control room as reporter Khoun Leakana, formerly of The Phnom Penh Post, beams in live from the scene of a reeking chicken processing factory that has residents up in arms.

“We are journalists so we are like the bridge to make the government aware of people’s needs or also to bring what government needs from people,” said Sophorn, who cut her teeth as a reporter at Radio Free Asia before a stint at the PNN network of ruling party Senator Ly Yong Phat.

Ministry of Interior

The news menu includes stories about preparations for the upcoming water festival and the types of stories NICE TV producers say are their standard fare: residential complaints about floods and traffic.

The key to NICE TV’s “bridge to the people” is an app the company has developed called Tutu Live, which allows viewers to beam themselves into the program, the television equivalent of talk-back radio.

Through it they are pushing user-generated content from their currently small audience, including NICE TV’s partners at the Ministry of Interior.

“The ministry has a police network all around Cambodia so we want to create social news and we can use this resource to create the best social news in Cambodia,” Nice TV Chief Operations Officer Jason Liu told VOA, speaking through an interpreter.

Limit the scope of media?

Others are less optimistic about the partnership.

This type of partnership between a foreign firm and a ministry responsible for Cambodian state security looked “not good” said Nop Vy, acting head of the media conservator the Cambodian Center for Independent Media.

“The image of the location in the ministry itself and the work of the private company interferes into the work of the ministry and [the] Ministry of Interior’s role is very important,” he said.

“So we just thought that so through this support it will limit the scope of the media team working at their station because they will [be] working under the internal policy of the TV station and the policy I know that it maybe say something for example not doing something against China,” he added.

Certain topics avoided

Despite their close relationship with the ministry, which holds an unspecified but apparently small share in the venture, Sophorn and Lui insist they are free to report whatever they want.

For Lui, the fact that the station tends to avoid sensitive political stories or opposition perspectives is more indicative of viewer appetites than any state enforced restriction.

“The role of TV is to make people’s living better, it is not to make conflict,” he said.

But a casual chat with some of the producers at the network suggests it is well understood that anything that could provoke the ruling Cambodian People’s Party is not to be touched.

Traditional journalism gone

Meanwhile their opportunities to do traditional journalism are evaporating as government critical news organizations fall one after another under increasing government pressure on the free press.

Gone are The Cambodian Daily, an obstinate dissenter for more than two decades, the broadcasts of Radio Free Asia and more than 30 radio frequencies that relayed their own shows as well as those of others, including Voice of America. Rumors that The Phnom Penh Post will soon be shuttered are swirling, but persistently denied by the bilingual paper.

In this void, outfits more in line with the Chinese model of media-state relations are on the verge of taking over the press entirely in Cambodia.

In an interview with VOA, Huy Vannak, an under-secretary of state at the Ministry of Interior, suggested that though the content at NICE TV will predominantly focus on entertainment, the station will also work “to inform the people about how to enforce the better public service.”

“That’s the purpose to have the TV because the ministry is run and has a big task to the people basically at the grass-roots level because we have the police department on the security side and we have the public service on the administration side,” he said.

VOA has sought to clarify the ministry’s relationship with NICE TV, but after months of efforts no comment has been forthcoming.

Liu conceded it was unusual for a foreign company to hold such a partnership with a government ministry. But he stressed NICE TV was an entirely private operation that has simply been the beneficiary of blossoming relations between Cambodia and China.

“Because we come from private enterprise so the Cambodian government allow us to come and invest on the media sector, but if we come from Chinese government the Cambodian government I think they will not allow us to come and invest in the media sector,” he said.

He refused to comment on the record about whether the Chinese government held any influence over the station.

Reporter Sun Narin in Washington contributed to this report.
…

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Life is good at NICE TV.

Staff enjoy generous benefits at the new Chinese network and their flashy building, directly inside Cambodia’s Ministry of Interior, boasts an elegant restaurant on the fifth floor with 360 degree views of the city’s political heartland.

News manager Seang Sophorn is busy directing from the control room as reporter Khoun Leakana, formerly of The Phnom Penh Post, beams in live from the scene of a reeking chicken processing factory that has residents up in arms.

“We are journalists so we are like the bridge to make the government aware of people’s needs or also to bring what government needs from people,” said Sophorn, who cut her teeth as a reporter at Radio Free Asia before a stint at the PNN network of ruling party Senator Ly Yong Phat.

Ministry of Interior

The news menu includes stories about preparations for the upcoming water festival and the types of stories NICE TV producers say are their standard fare: residential complaints about floods and traffic.

The key to NICE TV’s “bridge to the people” is an app the company has developed called Tutu Live, which allows viewers to beam themselves into the program, the television equivalent of talk-back radio.

Through it they are pushing user-generated content from their currently small audience, including NICE TV’s partners at the Ministry of Interior.

“The ministry has a police network all around Cambodia so we want to create social news and we can use this resource to create the best social news in Cambodia,” Nice TV Chief Operations Officer Jason Liu told VOA, speaking through an interpreter.

Limit the scope of media?

Others are less optimistic about the partnership.

This type of partnership between a foreign firm and a ministry responsible for Cambodian state security looked “not good” said Nop Vy, acting head of the media conservator the Cambodian Center for Independent Media.

“The image of the location in the ministry itself and the work of the private company interferes into the work of the ministry and [the] Ministry of Interior’s role is very important,” he said.

“So we just thought that so through this support it will limit the scope of the media team working at their station because they will [be] working under the internal policy of the TV station and the policy I know that it maybe say something for example not doing something against China,” he added.

Certain topics avoided

Despite their close relationship with the ministry, which holds an unspecified but apparently small share in the venture, Sophorn and Lui insist they are free to report whatever they want.

For Lui, the fact that the station tends to avoid sensitive political stories or opposition perspectives is more indicative of viewer appetites than any state enforced restriction.

“The role of TV is to make people’s living better, it is not to make conflict,” he said.

But a casual chat with some of the producers at the network suggests it is well understood that anything that could provoke the ruling Cambodian People’s Party is not to be touched.

Traditional journalism gone

Meanwhile their opportunities to do traditional journalism are evaporating as government critical news organizations fall one after another under increasing government pressure on the free press.

Gone are The Cambodian Daily, an obstinate dissenter for more than two decades, the broadcasts of Radio Free Asia and more than 30 radio frequencies that relayed their own shows as well as those of others, including Voice of America. Rumors that The Phnom Penh Post will soon be shuttered are swirling, but persistently denied by the bilingual paper.

In this void, outfits more in line with the Chinese model of media-state relations are on the verge of taking over the press entirely in Cambodia.

In an interview with VOA, Huy Vannak, an under-secretary of state at the Ministry of Interior, suggested that though the content at NICE TV will predominantly focus on entertainment, the station will also work “to inform the people about how to enforce the better public service.”

“That’s the purpose to have the TV because the ministry is run and has a big task to the people basically at the grass-roots level because we have the police department on the security side and we have the public service on the administration side,” he said.

VOA has sought to clarify the ministry’s relationship with NICE TV, but after months of efforts no comment has been forthcoming.

Liu conceded it was unusual for a foreign company to hold such a partnership with a government ministry. But he stressed NICE TV was an entirely private operation that has simply been the beneficiary of blossoming relations between Cambodia and China.

“Because we come from private enterprise so the Cambodian government allow us to come and invest on the media sector, but if we come from Chinese government the Cambodian government I think they will not allow us to come and invest in the media sector,” he said.

He refused to comment on the record about whether the Chinese government held any influence over the station.

Reporter Sun Narin in Washington contributed to this report.
…

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Next week’s inter-Korean summit will take place in the uninhabited village of Panmunjom, inside the tense and highly fortified demilitarized zone that separates the communist North and the democratic South. This historic site, where the Korean War armistice was signed in 1953, has since become a key point of contact for cross border communication and a major tourist destination.

The Panmunjom meeting site, located on the border between North and South Korea, was first established in 1951 to negotiate a truce to end the Korean War. The talks and the fighting went on for three more years before an armistice was signed.

Symbol of division

Today Panmunjom has come to symbolize the ongoing division of the Korean Peninsula. It is the only site along the heavily fortified 250-kilometer long demilitarized zone border where soldiers from both the North and South are in close proximity to each other.

No civilians live in the cluster of blue huts within the Joint Security Area, which is controlled by both North Korea and the United Nations Command established during the Korean War.

“The whole job of the joint security battalion here, the R.O.K. [Republic of Korea] soldiers and the U.S. soldiers that you see out here today is to provide security to enable dialogue between the two [sides],” said J. Elise Van Pool, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Forces Korea during a media tour on Wednesday.

Panmunjom is located 50 kilometers north of Seoul, and has been the site of numerous cross border talks, including recent planning sessions for the upcoming inter-Korean summit. The conference rooms are reportedly equipped with closed circuits cameras so that officials in Seoul and Pyongyang can monitor meetings.

Inter-Korean summit

The April 27 meeting between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will take place at the Peace House conference building on the South Korean side of Panmunjom. It will be the first time a North Korean leader has visited South Korea and the first inter-Korean summit in over a decade.

“They are still working out the series of events, so how the two leaders will egress into the building, and of course they will have staffers who come with them. So that is still all being negotiated,” said the USFK spokeswoman.

The rapid diplomatic progress this year that has led to the inter-Korean summit, and the U.S.-North Korea summit expected to be held in late May or early June, came from the North Korean leader’s expressed willingness to engage in denuclearization talks. Kim’s turn toward diplomacy has reduced, for now, the potential for conflict over the North’s accelerated efforts last year to develop an operational nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missile that can reach the U.S. mainland.

In addition to addressing denuclearization issues, South Korean officials said this week that Moon and Kim would discuss formally replacing the Korean War armistice with a formal peace treaty that would normalize relations and increase security cooperation.

Tense peace

While the border region is controlled to maintain a tense peace, there have been isolated incidents of conflict and violence over the years.

In November, security cameras in the DMZ recorded the North Korean military shooting one of its own soldiers, as he raced across the border to defect to the South.

One of the most infamous incidents occurred in 1976 when axe wielding North Korean soldiers killed two U.S. Army officers who were part of a work crew cutting down a tree that partially blocked the view of U.N. observers.

South Korea also discovered four tunnels being dug across the DMZ that had the capacity to secretly transport as many as 2,000 North Korean troops for a potential surprise invasion. The tunnels have been disabled and are now tourist attractions. Pyongyang denied the tunnels where made for military use, instead saying they were for coal mining.

The Joint Security Area is also a major tourist destination where over 100,000 people visited from the South in 2017, and nearly 30,000 visited the site from the North.

One of the main attractions is, what is often called the “propaganda village” on the North side of the DMZ, a group of brightly colored buildings that South Korea says is uninhabited, and was built to produce the illusion of prosperity in the impoverished North.

On the South Korean side of the DMZ is the village of Daeseong-Dong, a farming community where residents are exempt from taxes to encourage them to stay and populate this potentially dangerous border region that would become a battleground if war were to ever break out again.

Lee Yoon-jee in Seoul contributed to this report.
…

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Next week’s inter-Korean summit will take place in the uninhabited village of Panmunjom, inside the tense and highly fortified demilitarized zone that separates the communist North and the democratic South. This historic site, where the Korean War armistice was signed in 1953, has since become a key point of contact for cross border communication and a major tourist destination.

The Panmunjom meeting site, located on the border between North and South Korea, was first established in 1951 to negotiate a truce to end the Korean War. The talks and the fighting went on for three more years before an armistice was signed.

Symbol of division

Today Panmunjom has come to symbolize the ongoing division of the Korean Peninsula. It is the only site along the heavily fortified 250-kilometer long demilitarized zone border where soldiers from both the North and South are in close proximity to each other.

No civilians live in the cluster of blue huts within the Joint Security Area, which is controlled by both North Korea and the United Nations Command established during the Korean War.

“The whole job of the joint security battalion here, the R.O.K. [Republic of Korea] soldiers and the U.S. soldiers that you see out here today is to provide security to enable dialogue between the two [sides],” said J. Elise Van Pool, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Forces Korea during a media tour on Wednesday.

Panmunjom is located 50 kilometers north of Seoul, and has been the site of numerous cross border talks, including recent planning sessions for the upcoming inter-Korean summit. The conference rooms are reportedly equipped with closed circuits cameras so that officials in Seoul and Pyongyang can monitor meetings.

Inter-Korean summit

The April 27 meeting between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will take place at the Peace House conference building on the South Korean side of Panmunjom. It will be the first time a North Korean leader has visited South Korea and the first inter-Korean summit in over a decade.

“They are still working out the series of events, so how the two leaders will egress into the building, and of course they will have staffers who come with them. So that is still all being negotiated,” said the USFK spokeswoman.

The rapid diplomatic progress this year that has led to the inter-Korean summit, and the U.S.-North Korea summit expected to be held in late May or early June, came from the North Korean leader’s expressed willingness to engage in denuclearization talks. Kim’s turn toward diplomacy has reduced, for now, the potential for conflict over the North’s accelerated efforts last year to develop an operational nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missile that can reach the U.S. mainland.

In addition to addressing denuclearization issues, South Korean officials said this week that Moon and Kim would discuss formally replacing the Korean War armistice with a formal peace treaty that would normalize relations and increase security cooperation.

Tense peace

While the border region is controlled to maintain a tense peace, there have been isolated incidents of conflict and violence over the years.

In November, security cameras in the DMZ recorded the North Korean military shooting one of its own soldiers, as he raced across the border to defect to the South.

One of the most infamous incidents occurred in 1976 when axe wielding North Korean soldiers killed two U.S. Army officers who were part of a work crew cutting down a tree that partially blocked the view of U.N. observers.

South Korea also discovered four tunnels being dug across the DMZ that had the capacity to secretly transport as many as 2,000 North Korean troops for a potential surprise invasion. The tunnels have been disabled and are now tourist attractions. Pyongyang denied the tunnels where made for military use, instead saying they were for coal mining.

The Joint Security Area is also a major tourist destination where over 100,000 people visited from the South in 2017, and nearly 30,000 visited the site from the North.

One of the main attractions is, what is often called the “propaganda village” on the North side of the DMZ, a group of brightly colored buildings that South Korea says is uninhabited, and was built to produce the illusion of prosperity in the impoverished North.

On the South Korean side of the DMZ is the village of Daeseong-Dong, a farming community where residents are exempt from taxes to encourage them to stay and populate this potentially dangerous border region that would become a battleground if war were to ever break out again.

Lee Yoon-jee in Seoul contributed to this report.
…

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