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President Roh Moo-hyun and the First Lady wave at a gathering hosted by the Roh support group Nosamo on Dec.19, 2003, to mark the first anniversary of the president's victory in the 16th presidential election, in which Nosamo claims to have had a decisive hand.
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 Roh Supporters Declare War on Chosun and DongA Ilbo
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A support group for President Roh Moo-hyun is launching a campaign to reduce subscription to the nation's leading conservative dailies and redirect their readership to two pro-government papers. Nosamo, an Internet-based group thought to have contributed greatly to Roh¡¯s election victory in 2002, decided on Jan. 22 to lobby readers to ditch the Chosun and Dong-A Ilbo and read the Hankyoreh and Kyunghyang Shinmun instead.
The campaign will be timed to coincide with a series of re-examinations of Kore¡¯a recent past instigated by the Roh government. They include a committee to investigate collaboration with the Japanese occupation and a probe into recent history. The campaign is also timed to take advantage of a controversial new media law that will go into effect in April, according to minutes of a recent Nosamo meeting.
Once the history probe is approved by the National Assembly in February, Nosamo will hold nationwide rallies attacking the two conservative dailies and boosting the two pro-government newspapers. The pro-Roh group plans to sponsor an anti-Chosun Ilbo marathon in October and an anti-Chosun couples party in December.
Nosamo hopes to aggravate the blow dealt to the two conservative dailies by the media law. "A program is needed to maximize results timed with the enforcement of the history law and¡± the newspaper law, which among other things allows third parties to lodge complaints against newspapers with an arbitration body.
"We have decided to launch activities positively supporting the Hankyoreh and Kyunghyang Shinmun in future," Nosamo chairman Shim Woo-jae said in an online interview. Both will be launched over the lunar New Year holidays.
"A simple anti-Chosun campaign has already been conducted. Beginning this year, however, the campaign will use a legal system," said a Nosamo official. "Besides an anti-Chosun campaign, we'll put more energy into boosting the Hankyoreh and Kyunghyang Shinmun."
Nosamo will set up special nationwide organizations for the campaign and seek the assistance of the Korea Confederation of Trade Unions and the Korea Teachers and Educational Workers Union. The group plans to target public institutions like the dong or village offices, post offices and financial institutions in the pro-Hankyoreh campaign.
(Jung Woo-sang, imagine@chosun.com )
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