The Park Geun-hye impeachment upheaval is continuing through the snap presidential election scheduled for May 9. Presidential candidates vow to change many things, but they say little of the media, which in fact contributed a lot to the fall of Park from the pedestal of power. While everyone believes our presidency needs to change, the media world should take a moment for deep self-reflection, particularly in its manner of overseeing the center of power.

If Park was a leader of an uncommon background and style, the Korean media is also a unique institution, to say the least. Being proud of having served as a morale booster for the public in their path toward democratic development, the media finds itself negatively rewarded with an increasingly adverse business environment that forces them into limitless competition against each other.

The newspaper subscription rate fell to 14.3 percent in 2015 from 48.3 percent in 2004 (only 1 in 7 Korean households subscribe to a newspaper) and the readership rate (the number of people regularly reading newspapers) from 70.6 percent to 25.4 percent during the same period, according to a survey by the official Korea Journalism Promotion Foundation. The average Korean spends 7.9 minutes a day reading a newspaper while he or she spends 103.8 minutes on the internet and 22.7 minutes on social media.

As a man who has worked for “paper newspapers” and lived on salaries from them for nearly his entire career, these figures are hard to believe. But the fact is proven when you see everyone in the subway train glued to their smartphones. Even Focus, Metro and other free newspapers are much less prevalent than they were a few years ago. The once powerful terrestrial TV networks have conceded many viewers to the new cable channels and they now have to be content with single-digit ratings, often in the lower half.

Under these circumstances, traditional media has dealt laboriously with inside and outside forces to change simply to survive. In the hot water of business adversity, however, they were unable to effectively challenge the institutions of power, piteously conscious of their comparative weakness. The foremost example was the media’s relationship with the presidential office.

The Blue House has a press corps with hundreds of print, broadcast and new media journalists given credentials to cover the highest government office. What made the president’s bizarre life of dependence on her longtime friend Choi Soon-sil possible, however, was these people’s inability to keep watch on the president, in other words the absence of press coverage itself.

The latest edition of Kwanhun Journal, a quarterly published by the Kwanhun Club, the fraternity of senior journalists, contained a confession of frustrations experienced by a newspaperman while “covering” the presidential office for 2 1/2 years from Park’s inauguration in February 2013.

“The Choi Soon-sil affair was exposed by the media. But a half of the responsibility for what has happened rests on the media. If the media had performed its mission of overseeing and checking the power properly, the situation would not have been as bad as this. No one in the media can deny it,” said Jeong Jong-tae, currently economic editor of the Korea Economic Daily.

“The Blue House press corps is nothing but a group of reporters who take the No. 1 jet with the president when the chief executive flies on a foreign visit. We called ourselves ‘reporters outside the Blue House wall’ because the press facility is in fact located outside the presidential office complex,” he said. The only chance to enter the presidential compound is when one is chosen for a two-man press pool for a special occasion inside it. The pair usually has to leave right after hearing the president’s keynote address.

The press was completely shut out of what was going on inside the Blue House while Choi Soon-sil freely moved in and out there day and night. The media has endured it, accepting the “national security” excuse. No wonder South Korea ranked 70th among world nations in the Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters Without Borders. Park had a total of three press conferences since 2013 in the Blue House before her three recent public apologies.

Then we see another aspect of press activities in this country, totally different from the extreme submission hitherto shown toward the Blue House. There was an avalanche of “news” about the president’s private associates once the cloak of secrecy was torn off with the outbreak of the Choi scandal. Individuals who were involved in any part of the ties between the president and Choi were prematurely incriminated as the press and investigators exchanged information in the name of the people’s right to know.

Hangyoreh newspaper and TV Chosun deserve commendation for their disclosure of the Mir and K-Sports foundations, which were stealthily established with allegedly forced donations from large businesses. Yet, the JTBC’s mysterious acquisition of a tablet PC allegedly used by Choi in communicating with the president and the arrest of Choi’s daughter by Danish authorities on a tip from a JTBC reporter were episodes that raised questions about journalistic ethics.

At the scenes of near pandemonium at the entrance to the special counsel’s office in Gangnam when summoned persons arrive there for questioning, one feels like he or she is witnessing a survival game our media outlets are now forced into. Celebrities such as Samsung Group leader Lee Jae-yong, former presidential chief of staff Kim Ki-choon and former Culture Minister Cho Yoon-sun are already being punished as they walk in with their bound hands wrapped in clothes, hassled by waiting reporters.

The nation is again in a chapter of transition to get rid of the practices of corruption in higher places, murky ties between big businesses and the state power and the hiding of incompetence in the top office behind the curtain of security excuses. The law will do the job side by side with politics. The next task is innovation of the media -- through determined challenges against the core of power on one hand and fair treatment of everyone else who needs their rights first protected by the press on the other.

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By Kim Myong-sik

Kim Myong-sik is a former editorial writer for The Korea Herald. He served as managing editor of The Korea Times in the 1990s. -- Ed.