The media law is divided into the Newspaper Act, the Broadcasting Act, the IPTV Act and the Information and Communications Network Act. The broadcasting bills mainly deal with ownership and cross-ownership in existing law, and the government announced it would ease rules on newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership, citing a Constitutional Court ruling of nonconformity and the need for competitiveness. They also imply an intention to manage internet news separately from press organizations. Allowing newspapers and broadcasters to be owned together could achieve the aim of expanding media industry infrastructure, but concentration of capital could undermine fair reporting, so the regulatory system needs to be supplemented.

The Newspaper Act amendment focuses on cross-ownership among large companies, foreign capital and newspapers. Most of the amendment eases rules so that newspapers, large companies and foreign capital can take part in each other within set limits. Provisions on telecom and broadcast ownership and broadcast advertising were newly created with newspapers and large companies entering broadcasting in mind. Participation in converged telecom-broadcast media is also specified, so sanctions were strengthened as well.

Deregulation of broadcasting is handled mainly through the Newspaper Act because the earlier rules were written mainly to limit newspapers' scope of activity. The amendment sets out ownership and cross-ownership limits for newspapers, broadcasters and large companies, and its overall direction is to relax them.

Within the media law's aims, the IPTV provisions are most closely tied to expanding media industry infrastructure. IPTV has struggled from its launch to secure content and improve quality, so the amendment seeks to boost it by easing limits on capital investment and program providers. Introducing general programming and news channels can be expected to increase diversity of content, ideas and viewpoints, and also gives viewers wider exposure diversity. Because viewers can choose among more media content and perspectives, allowing general programming and news channels is expected to increase exposure diversity.

IPTV must compete with digital cable TV, but it has spread slowly because of difficulty securing content for its many channels. The media law therefore aims to expand the converged telecom-broadcast market around IPTV by easing limits and rules on program providers.

The bill on information and communications networks stems from the need to regulate the internet's many convenient functions. It mainly covers insults to personality online and copyright protection. In particular, the proposed 'cyber insult' offense was drafted because online insults are often hard to trace owing to anonymity and indiscriminate copying and distribution, making it difficult to rely on reports or complaints.

Diversity of opinion in media without a stable business base raises even more problems of fairness and accountability in reporting. The damage to journalism from weak management structures can be greater than the threat to fair reporting from monopolistic operation by big capital, which makes it a question of after-the-fact regulation.

The problem of fair reporting spans a wide range, from structural levels such as media ownership to the personal ethics of individual journalists.

To add: the media law this paper discusses was passed by the National Assembly in July 2009. On October 29 of that year, the Constitutional Court found that lawmakers' rights to deliberate and vote had been infringed in declaring the Newspaper Act and Broadcasting Act passed, but rejected claims to nullify the declarations (2009Hun-Ra8 and others). The laws therefore took effect, and in December 2011 four general programming channels with newspaper participation went on air. In the Minerva case, Article 47(1) of the Framework Act on Telecommunications, which punished false communications, was struck down by the Constitutional Court on December 28, 2010 for violating the principle of clarity (2008Hun-Ba157 and others). A cyber insult offense was discussed but never adopted.