Michael Breen (author)

Michael Breen (born 31 July 1952, Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom) is an author and journalist covering North and South Korea. He has a regular newspaper column in The Korea Times, an English-language daily in South Korea.

Career

Breen is a graduate of the University of Edinburgh and first began living in South Korea in 1982.^[1] He has covered North and South Korea for several newspapers including The Guardian and the Washington Times.^[2] In 1994, he became a management consultant specializing in North Korea, with clients such as Coca-Cola. He entered the public relations field in 1999 as the managing director of Merit/Burson-Marsteller. where he remained until 2004. He is now president of Insight Communications Consultants, a public relations firm. Breen was made an honorary citizen of Seoul in 2001.

A former follower and biographer of the controversial Unification Church leader Sun Myung Moon, Breen said in a 2005 American Prospect story to have brokered talks in the early 1990s between Moon and the North Korean leadership, laying groundwork for a visit by the staff of Moon's Washington Times.^[3] Breen has also authored a church-approved biography of Moon, Sun Myung Moon: The Early Years.^[4]

Newspaper column

As of May 2008, Breen has a featured column for The Korea Times, an English-language daily in South Korea, where he comments on Korean society, culture, and political issues.^[5] In December 2009, Breen wrote a satirical column in the paper which lampooned various South Korean public figures, including president Lee Myung-bak, entertainer Rain, and Samsung. Displeased with Breen's allusions to their corruption and arrogance, Samsung sued him and the paper for libel; the paper was later dropped as a respondent, but the suit against Breen himself remained.^[6]

Controversy

Michael Breen lawsuit

On December 25, 2009, Michael Breen wrote a controversial column that was meant to be satire. Breen depicted Samsung offering gifts to politicians, and also depicted Korean singer Rain as "Pee" although this was also a spoof-pronunciation by the older British singer Susan Boyle, and meant to make fun of Boyle and not Rain. However, the reference was interpreted by Koreans to mean something offensive about Rain himself.^[7] Further, the South Korean media mis-interpreted the entire column as an insult to Korea itself.^[8] On December 29, 2009, Samsung sues Mike Breen and the Korea Times, for $1 million, claiming criminal defamation over a satirical column published on Christmas Day 2009.^[9][10] Samsung dropped the charges following the correction and Michael Breen's apology.

The Korea Times issued this apology:

Correction
The Korea Times would like to issue a further correction with regard to the column headlined “What People Got for Christmas” by Michael Breen (Page 6, December 25, 2009) and the related clarification (Page 1, December 26, 2009). The column indicated in its introduction that it was a factual roundup of stories in the news, and the columnist did not explain clearly at any point that it was intended to be humorous or satirical. As such, we accept that Korean and overseas readers might be sufficiently misled to believe that the claims in the columns were based on fact. However, The Korea Times has confirmed that the claims made in the column were entirely false and without foundation. The Korea Times published these claims without proper fact-checking and its initial clarification failed to sufficiently explain that the column misled readers. The Korea Times would like to sincerely apologize to both its Korean and overseas readers and those mentioned in the column. -- Korea Times (01-29-2010)^[11]

Published works

• Sun Myung Moon: The Early Years. Refuge Books, 1999.
• Kim Jong-Il: North Korea's Dear Leader. John Wiley and Sons, 2004. ISBN 978-0470821312.
• The Koreans: Who They Are, What They Want, Where Their Future Lies. St. Martin's Griffin, 2004.

References

1. ^ LaMoshi, Gary (January 16, 2004). "Man of contradictions". Asia Times. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/FA16Dg03.html. 
2. ^ holtzbrinck publishers
3. ^ [1]
4. ^ http://www.unification.org/ucbooks/earlyyears/index.html
5. ^ The Korea Times: Opinion
6. ^ Los Angeles Times: Samsung doesn't find satirical spoof amusing
7. ^ “What People Got for Christmas” (full text) by Michael Breen December 25, 2009 (Note: Original publication was in the Korea Times, but later the original column was removed.)
8. ^ 한국 ´조롱´ 마이클 브린, "사과한 것 맞아?" (Michael Breen mocking Korea, Is he really going to apologize to us?)(Korean)2010-05-14. EBN News
9. ^ "Samsung Sues Satirist, Claiming Criminal Defamation, Over Satirical Column Poking Fun At Samsung". Techdirt. 2010-05-11. http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100510/1820159367.shtml. Retrieved 2010-09-04. 
10. ^ Glionna, John M. (2010-05-10). "Samsung doesn't find satirical spoof amusing". Los Angeles Times. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/asia/la-fg-korea-samsung-20100510,0,7395282,full.story. Retrieved 2010-05-23. 
11. ^ Correction 01-29-2010. Korea Times

External links

• ABC News
• Bio page at Insight Communications Consultants
• Sun Myung Moon: The Early Years (unification.org) Full text of Reverend Moon biography, on Unification Church website

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Name	Breen, Michael
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Date of birth	July 31, 1952
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