Press freedom is crucial for development, said Vietnamese Ambassador to South Korea Pham Huu Chi during a lecture organized by the Asia Society Korea Center at the ASEAN-Korea Center in Seoul on Tuesday.

Pham described how his country dramatically decreased the poverty rate and achieved many United Nations Millennium Development Goals in just two decades. But he cautioned that continued development would depend on a free press.

Vietnam has long been criticized for having a poor record on press freedom by advocates such as Freedom House and Reporters With Borders.

In Pham’s lecture, titled “Poverty reduction in Vietnam: Success, lessons and role of world community,” he cited a local story about a villager who carried children one by one in a plastic bag ― thereby keeping their school clothes dry ― when a local footbridge in Sam Lang village, Dien Bien province, near Hanoi in northern Vietnam, washed out during annual spring floods.

The villager was recorded on a local teacher’s smartphone and the video sent to local media outlets across the nation. Online, it went viral, and the international media picked it up shortly after that. The story prompted authorities to visit the isolated village and build another bridge for its residents.

Vietnam was ranked 172nd for press freedom out of 178 countries analyzed by Reporters Without Borders, a France-based nonprofit that promotes press freedom around the world, in the 2013 edition of its World Press Freedom Index. It was ranked nearly as low as North Korea.

“In Vietnam and China, those involved in online news and information such as bloggers and netizens are forced to deal with increasingly harsh repression,” the report on the 2013 index said.

“In less than a year, Vietnamese courts have sentenced 12 bloggers and cyberdissidents to jail terms of up to 13 years, making the country the world’s second-biggest jailer of netizens after China.

An official at the embassy said that Vietnamese press freedom is misunderstood by Western critics. Journalists in Vietnam can criticize specific issues, corruption or local authorities, as long as they do not criticize Vietnam’s political system or the Communist Party, the official said.

Pham’s lecture was the latest in a series that the Asia Society Korea Center has been organizing since June 2008. Past lecturers included John Delury, professor of East Asian Studies at Yonsei University’s Graduate School of International Studies, spoke about his recent book at April’s session.

Next month’s lecture is slated for Oct. 14 and will be delivered by Thai Ambassador to South Korea Kulkumut Singhara Na Ayudhaya. Many foreign diplomats regularly attend the luncheon lectures. On Tuesday, Russian Ambassador to South Korea Konstantin Vnukov took part.

For more information, contact the Asia Society Korea Center office at koreacenter@asiasociety.org.

By Philip Iglauer (ephilip2014@heraldcorp.com)