BALI, Indonesia– The office of President Yoon Suk-yeol denied Monday that it restricted pool coverage of Yoon’s bilateral summits with U.S. President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida the previous day, saying the decision to have them covered by photo and video journalists working for the presidential office was based on prior consultations with the two countries.
South Korean news outlets reported that the presidential office had not allowed Yoon’s traveling press corps to cover the summits that took place in Phnom Penh on the sidelines of regional gatherings the previous day.
“This is a misunderstanding caused by a failure to properly understand summit diplomacy protocol,” deputy presidential spokesperson Lee Jae-myoung said in a statement.
“The coverage of the two meetings by photo and video journalists working for the presidential office was in line with prior consultations between the two countries,” he continued. “Denigrating diplomatic activities with content different from the truth is of no help to the national interest.”
Lee went on to explain that no country can decide the form of coverage on its own, and that the presidential office’s revision of the duration of time the South Korea-Japan summit lasted was also a result of bilateral consultations.
He also suggested the presidential office would not have allowed the press corps to cover Sunday’s trilateral summit between Yoon, Biden and Kishida, and air a portion of it live, had it wished to restrict press coverage.
Source: Yonhap News Agency