[imText1]Following last year North Korea was again considered the worst country in the world to violate freedom of speech. North Korea has maintained the lowest ranking for the fifth consecutive time on the press freedom index. <\/p>\n
An international organization based in Paris, \u201cReports without Borders (RSF)\u201d, announced on the 23rd the \u201cWorldwide Press Freedom Index 2006\u201d in which North Korea was ranked last on the index, at 168th, Myanmar was ranked 164th and China placed 163rd.<\/p>\n
In the report, RSF said \u201cUnfortunately nothing has changed in the countries that are the worst predators of press freedom,\u201d and \u201cJournalists in North Korea, Myanmar, and China are still risking their lives or facing imprisonment for trying to keep us informed.\u201d<\/p>\n
In particular, the RSF said, \u201cThe all-powerful North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, also continues to totally control the media,\u201d and advocated the urgency of the \u201cleaders of these countries to accept criticism and stop routinely cracking down on the media so harshly.\u201d<\/p>\n
North Korea was ranked as the worst violator of speech as the RSF explained, \u201cThe Rodong Shinmun (The Worker\u2019s Newspaper, the state controlled newspaper), the N. Korean Central News Agency, and the national television Joongang Bangsong, is under the direct control of Kim Jong Il,\u201d and \u201cEach journalist is indoctrinated so as to be able to render, without mistakes, the grandeur of the late president Kim Il Sung and of his son Kim Jong Il.\u201d<\/p>\n
The RSF said, \u201cThe press is also responsible for demonstrating the superiority of North Korean socialism over bourgeois and imperialist corruption,\u201d and in actuality \u201cSong Keum Chul, of state television was put in a concentration camp at the end of 1995, for having set up a small group of critical journalists.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nSouth Korea, first in the Asia region this year and last<\/b><\/font><\/p>\n Alternatively, South Korea elevated 3 places to 31st with the highest ranking in the Asia region. Since the RSF first announced the index in 2002, Korea was ranked 39th, 49th in 2003 , 48th in 2004 and in 2005 up 14 places to 34th. <\/p>\n With rising nationalism, Japan fell 14 places since last year to rank 51st on the freedom of press index and the U.S. also dropped to 53rd from 44th. The RSF explained in the U.S. case \u201crelations between the media and the Bush administration sharply deteriorated\u201d amongst the terror war and consequently fell from its ranking. <\/p>\n The RSF analyzes and ranks each country based on direct acts, inspection, investigations or pressures on journalist murders, arrests and incidents arising from freedom of press. <\/p>\n The RSF works in collaboration with 50 or so organizations, journalists, research institutes, legal experts, human rights movements worldwide, distributing surveys to each country and then collating the information to announce an annual ranking for press freedom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [imText1]Following last year North Korea was again considered the worst country in the world to violate freedom of speech. North Korea has maintained the lowest ranking for the fifth consecutive time on the press freedom index. An international organization based in Paris, \u201cReports without Borders (RSF)\u201d, announced on the 23rd the \u201cWorldwide Press Freedom Index […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":169,"featured_media":2822,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wikipediapreview_detectlinks":true,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n