When Canadian journalists report international news, whose stories don’t get told?
On December 3, 2024, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law. It was a move for political self-preservation that Yoon retracted only a few hours later. As the first such declaration since the 1980s, when martial law was used to silence pro-democracy protestors, it recalled a time many South Koreans believed was long behind them. In military barracks across the country, young soldiers stayed up late, against orders, watching the news and wondering what it might mean. They were frustrated—would they have to carry out Yoon’s order while serving mandatory military time? “We were very annoyed,” says one soldier, who spoke to the Review on condition of anonymity.
That soldier’s emotion was disconnected from the narratives dominating international coverage. It also hinted at a generational tension. Older South Koreans, shaped by the memory of the Korean War, are inclined to view conscription as a necessity. Younger South Koreans, meanwhile, more often see it as an outdated burden in a nation that hasn’t seen active combat in over 70 years. Yet, when international news outlets such as Reuters and The New York Times reported on Yoon’s martial law declaration, they omitted details about soldiers’ emotions and their sentiments about conscription—specifics that would humanize military personnel. Only official statements, limited analyses from political experts, and historical comparisons between the two martial law declarations made popular headlines in the West. Stories in Canadian outlets similarly referred to South Korean anxieties without including the perspectives of military personnel and ordinary citizens. One story published by CBC suggested that actions by “hundreds of armed troops” were excessive without directly quoting anyone from the military to provide perspective. An explainer from the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada said South Koreans watched the story unfold “anxiously” without quoting any citizens—even though many would have heard the news after it occurred.
Canadian news outlets are familiar with the challenge of finding “ordinary citizen” perspectives in the newsroom. “We want to talk to the everyday Joe Blow,” says Rethi Santra, an executive producer with CBC News Network and former executive producer of World News at CBC, who previously worked as a foreign assignment editor at CTV National News. “But it’s not always possible because of the challenge of access.” As a result, that default coverage leans on official sources at the expense of local perspectives.
Canadian newsrooms shape international coverage based on audience. “It’s a balance of what people want to know and what people need to know,” says Santra. And in Canada, that balance is particularly complex. “We have large communities from Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean, so global stories often hit close to home.” Immigration policies, international student issues, and even major protests abroad take on added significance. Diversity shapes how stories are chosen and framed. “When I worked in Singapore, Tokyo, and Hong Kong, the audience wasn’t as varied,” Santra says. “In Canada, you’re speaking to people with ties all over the world.”
The problem is that international stories that resonate with Canadian audiences aren’t always told in a way that reflects the full picture, as in the case of the soldier. When key perspectives are left out, journalists risk creating narratives that can make locals feel that they’ve been misrepresented. International coverage of the martial law declaration focused on geopolitics, framing it as a test of Yoon’s political power rather than examining its social impact on South Koreans. “There was a flurry of coverage,” says Michelle Cho, professor of Korean media studies at the University of Toronto, but the news as told in Canada lacked deep contextualization of South Korean politics.
As someone who was born and raised in Seoul before moving to Canada at age 14, my understanding of South Korean current events often doesn’t align with how Western news presents them. Over the years, I’ve seen South Korean drug laws described as strict and unforgiving, without providing the historical context behind them: these are long-standing repercussions of the colonial drug trade in the early 1900s. I’ve rarely seen South Korean headlines about declining military morale make international news, even when they signal deeper societal tensions.
There is a gap between how South Korean events are being reported abroad and how they’re experienced at home. The hard facts tend to be right, but “the journalistic bent and cultural perspective of articles make them extremely different,” says my aunt Lena, who reads Yonhap News, the Korea JoongAng Daily, and headlines via the Naver news portal, as well as a smattering of outlets in her Apple News feed, including The Washington Post, Reuters, the Los Angeles Times, and The Guardian.
It’s not only news stories about South Korea that give the public an incomplete picture when told from the outside. Africa Practice’s recent study The Cost of Media Stereotypes to Africa found that poverty-centred portrayals of the continent in international media indirectly led to the continent paying inflated interest payments on sovereign debt. Journalists themselves have also pushed back against misrepresentative coverage. Starting in November 2023, more than a thousand journalists in the United States signed a petition calling on newsrooms to take responsibility for the “dehumanizing rhetoric” used in reporting on Palestinians.
As a journalist working in North America after growing up in Seoul, I can’t help but think of the repercussions. When international news does not reflect what locals are seeing, the rest of the world isn’t receiving a clear picture. This leads to inaccurate narratives with lasting implications. One example is the international coverage of student deaths from the 2014 sinking of the Sewol ferry, which leaned on cultural stereotypes rather than exposing systemic failures and ultimately shaped how the tragedy was understood outside South Korea. A Reuters article published by CBC framed the deaths of 250 students as a consequence of hierarchical Korean society, saying they did not question “their elders” and “paid for their obedience with their lives.” This framing obscured deeper issues, such as the country’s lax maritime regulations and the failures of those in power to protect lives.
Canadians do want to understand what’s going on in the world. However, the number of foreign correspondents is in steep decline, and it’s hard to fact-check online sources from remote places, especially when the journalist has no connection to the country. Even journalists with cultural ties can struggle with nuance. Korean Canadian journalist Hannah Sung, who has covered South Korea’s cultural industries for The Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star, describes the balancing act of writing from a distance. “I do worry a lot about accuracy,” she says. “There’s always this nagging fear—will I be inaccurate in a way that I can’t predict?”
That worry extends to fact-checking. Allison Baker, head of research at The Walrus and co-creator of the Truth in Journalism Fact-Checking Guide, recalls fact-checking “Teaching Indigenous Star Stories,” a 2020 Walrus piece exploring Cree approaches to astronomy. During the process, she came across conflicting accounts about the origins of two constellations. Written records described the origin story in one way, but the Cree community expert interviewed for the piece told a different version, so Baker helped determine the most appropriate version. “In traditional research practice, a written document might seem more trustworthy than someone ‘just saying something,’” Baker says. But considering lived experience as authoritative “helps fact-checkers focus on what’s most important to the community itself.” In that case, the oral history provided by the Cree expert was more accurate. Though it didn’t precisely mirror written research records, it reflected how the First Nation tells the story today.
The same principle applies to international coverage. A South Korean soldier’s frustration during the martial law announcement can tell us more about the event’s social impact than a president’s official statement about domestic unrest. Yet, institutional voices remain default sources in international reporting. This was the case with the coverage of the international general elections that dominated last year. For example, when Modi was re-elected in India in the summer of 2024, an Associated Press story published in BNN Bloomberg about the surprise win in a North Indian state didn’t include voices from voters in that state.
Beyond missing details, once a false narrative takes hold, it’s difficult to undo
Part of the problem is how journalists source information. Canadian newsrooms have access to translated versions of non-English media, but they don’t always make full use of them. Outlets such as NHK, France 24, and The Korea Times publish English editions of their stories that offer crucial local perspectives. Instead of engaging with these sources, coverage leans on newswires, narrowing the range of voices that shape international reporting. Santra says newsrooms do reference translated sources, but can’t apply a guaranteed level of scrutiny to all. “We consider those to be a reputable resource,” she says of major translated outlets, “but that doesn’t mean every organization that has two versions is reputable.” While caution is warranted, she says journalists already verify sources as standard practice. “The rule of thumb is if you can find three reputable sources that can confirm a fact, then you’re safe.” Yet, even with this process in place, local reporting doesn’t always make it into Western coverage.
Meanwhile, social media has become a primary tool for tracking breaking news. “Twenty years ago, we relied almost entirely on newswires,” Santra says. “Now, if a story breaks, our first instinct is to check social media.” That shift allows journalists to get updates from people on the ground, especially in foreign or remote areas where traditional news outlets may not have immediate access. “The challenge then becomes that you need to be able to verify the information,” she says.
To address this, news organizations use services like Storyful, which specializes in authenticating viral videos, or they rely on outlets with major local branches that have direct access, like BBC, to confirm details before reporting them. Some, such as CBC, have built in-house verification teams to analyze social media posts and videos. This verification process exists for translated sources, too, but the challenge isn’t just confirming accuracy, it’s making sure voices from afar feel fairly represented. Without deeper engagement with local media, coverage risks reinforcing a version of events that doesn’t fully reflect reality.
Cho says South Korea has an extensive media ecosystem, but international reporters can miss key perspectives by not properly engaging with it. “There’s a lot more effort put into translating Korean news into English for reporters, or for the interested public,” she says, “but I rarely see these sources referenced in Western coverage.”
“There are major Korean newspapers—The Korea Times, The Korea Herald—that have English editions,” Cho continues, “but I rarely see foreign correspondents in Canada or the U.S. engaging with them directly.” The first step, she thinks, is to acknowledge that English-language sources alone don’t provide a full picture. “Trying to find sources or help from people who can access news in Korean is really important.”
Journalists have the power to shape how entire nations are understood. If they fail to reflect local realities in their coverage, the consequences go beyond missing details. Once a false narrative takes hold, it’s difficult to undo. Cho recalls a recent example from the reporting of the demonstrations that followed the short-lived martial law declaration. “I saw a lot of coverage of the protests, but they were shallowly described as K-pop parties.”
This framing reflects a larger trend in how South Korea is perceived in Western media. “Before 2017 or 2018, mainstream news outlets mostly focused on North Korea and its geopolitical tensions,” says Cho. Then K-pop group BTS became a global phenomenon, and coverage naturally shifted to South Korea’s cultural industries. As a result, South Korea increasingly came to be defined through the lens of its entertainment exports, which soon bypassed its social and political complexities. “There’s a much deeper relationship going on,” Cho says. “In South Korea, large-scale protests have long been a way for citizens to express dissent, and young people have historically played a crucial role in social movements.” The visual language of fandom—organized chants, synchronized actions, and community-driven mobilization—has intersected with activism, especially as young people repurpose those tools for political engagement.
When media narratives simplify a country into a single idea, they don’t just create an incomplete picture. They determine what kinds of stories are told and which ones aren’t. By flattening protests into “K-pop parties,” Western coverage distracts from the political conflicts behind the events. If a protest is understood outside the country as a concert-like gathering rather than a serious political statement, it simply doesn’t carry the same weight.
Journalism is supposed to build bridges across distances, not distort the view from afar. When I read news about South Korea, I’m not scanning for facts, I’m looking for how my home country is presented to the rest of the world. As I enter the Canadian journalism industry, I think about that soldier and his unanswered questions. A soldier’s unease in Seoul reveals more about the weight of a government’s decision than a press release ever could. Context and personal perspectives aren’t just details in a story, they’re what make it whole.
About the author
Chloe is in her final year of the Master of Journalism program and works on the Review’s senior editorial team. She is interested in audio-based journalism and stories that prioritize underrepresented voices. She’s interned at The Big Story Podcast and CBC’s Day 6.
