The National Tax Service has notified the Chosun Ilbo that it will conduct a 60 business-day regular tax investigation of this newspaper from Oct. 30 to Jan. 23. The tax probe comes five years after the last one, which happened during the Kim Dae-jung administration. The Maeil Business Newspaper and state-run broadcaster KBS will also be subject to a tax probe, the NTS said.

In 2001, six teams of altogether 47 investigators took 142 days to investigate this newspaper in a bid to gag public opinion and press opposition to a return visit from North Korean leader Kim Jong-il to Seoul after Kim Dae-jung's Pyongyang trip. The Chosun Ilbo had raised questions about the legality of the means and process by which the administration tried to realize Kim Jong-il's Seoul visit, as well as its political objectives, and criticized the government's North Korea policy arguing that it needed to find a national consensus.

The tax probe came after the Chosun Ilbo rebuffed several threats and attempts at appeasement aimed at getting it to shift its tone. Even the current head of the NTS had to admit in a parliamentary hearing in July, "The 2001 tax probe left room for the misunderstanding that it was politically motivated."

After sifting through the bank accounts of the daily's owner, his family and relatives and the properties of key executives and columnists, the NTS slapped the Chosun Ilbo with W85.7 billion (US$1=W957) in additional taxes. Levying that sum against a company whose annual sales fell short of W400 billion was tantamount to an attempt to close the business down. Admitting the impropriety of the sum, the NTS subsequently canceled a total of W41.7 billion over several occasions. Appeals are still pending in an appellate court and the Supreme Court over the remainder.

The situation is much the same today. The NTS must realize how ridiculous its explanation must look that a tax probe is “due” and that this paper is fiddling the sales figures. The annual sales of the top three newspaper publishers run to about W350 billion, which puts them in the category of small and medium-sized businesses, and the Chosun Ilbo has regularly paid the largest amount of corporate tax among the country's newspapers since the 1980s without skipping a year.

In the three years and eight months since it assumed office, the administration has launched innumerable legal, administrative and verbal attacks against the Chosun Ilbo. There has even been physical violence from unknown sources. The man at the top never misses an opportunity to launch verbal broadsides against this paper, the government’s fifth column in the form of so-called civic groups attack the Chosun Ilbo on a regular basis, and administrative agencies including Cheong Wa Dae keep denying and filing lawsuits over our news coverage and opinions.

The Fair Trade Commission has assailed distribution centers that deliver the paper from 2 a.m. to the subscribers and Cheong Wa Dae Briefing and National Administration Briefing, both public information organs, urge their readership to complain about Chosun Ilbo reports. The government requires civil servants who contribute articles to the Chosun Ilbo to submit written explanations, and abruptly forced the Chosun Ilbo to end its sponsorship of the police service awards and environmental awards it has shared with administrative agencies for 40 years. Against this backdrop, a terror attack against this paper's owner took place in broad daylight recently.

All that is based on the arrogance of power which believes it can decide the fate of a newspaper. But though it may try to suppress them, it can’t kill them. Only the readers can determine a newspaper’s fate. The Chosun Ilbo trusts its readership and returns the trust of its subscribers with sincerity and commitment.