Who is the
Kyunghyang shinmun

The Kyunghyang Shinmun was founded in 1946 by the Catholic Church. Since its founding, it has gone through a turbulent history from the dictatorial power of Korea‘s first president, Rhee Seungman to the coup d’etat by Park Jung-hee and through the modern rapid economic development of the country of today.

While the newspaper was forced to cease publication due to its criticisms against the Rhee administration, it was revived after the pro-democracy revolution of April 19, 1960. During the Asian financial crisis of 1998, Kyunghyang Shinmun became an independent newspaper with employee ownership. Even though it does not keep its Catholic origin any more, it keeps the name. Kyunghyang is a Korean word and can be translated in Latin phrase ; ‘Urbi et Orbi(to the city and to the world)’.

The newspaper is at the front line of investigating activities of the government and Chaebols (conglomerates). We are on guard against abuses of human rights, and violations of personal freedom regardless of whether the government is conservative or liberal.

All 600 employees, including 240 journalists, comprise the biggest shareholders of the company(around 50%) and the rest is owned by retired employees and the company. Due to this organizational setup, we can work independently without any outside economic or political pressure.

Our CEO and management staff are elected by employees through open recruitment. The editor-in-chief, who is appointed by the CEO, must also gain a majority of votes from the journalist-employees. In addition, we have an Independent Newspaper Committee to monitor content and perspectives regularly. The Khyunghyang Shinmun fears only its readers and respect the freedom of speech and truth.

We support the moderate progressive in which we champion the cause of a better life for the ordinary people since the South Korean government spends less than 8% of its GDP for its social security network. We support economic policies in favor of small and medium businesses and the ‘sunshine policy’ of engagement with North Korea.

We have built a firm reputation amongst opinion leaders and intellectuals in South Korea who say that, "If you want to skim through issues, read whatever you want. However, if you want to know the truth, read The Kyunghyang Shinmun."

Not only are we proud of our reputation but we believe that we must strive to be an even better newspaper. Even now, we seek to tell the truth, defend justice, and protect the rights of our citizens and freedom of the press.

We seek to find a middle ground in the polarized environment of South Korea, while we are neither the most influential newspaper nor the most affluent one. We have a daily circulation of 350,000. Our website is the fifth most visited with over 1.3 million daily visitors and 6.2 million daily page views.

We lead in our reputation for the second most credible newspaper in South Korea, based on the poll by the Korea Association for Communication and Information (KACIS) which was published in January 2010.

Kyunghyang Shinmun also has three overseas bureaus in Washington, D.C., Tokyo and Beijing. There is also a daily sports newspaper(Sports Kyunghyang), a weekly news magazine (The Jugan Kyunghyang) and a monthly lifestyle magazine for women (The Lady Kyunghyang).