state division – The United States signed a Memorandum of Understanding to cooperate with South Korea within the battle towards false propaganda and disinformation.
It is the primary such settlement that Washington indicators with its Asian ally, and it comes as U.S. officers and lawmakers accuse the People’s Republic of China of conducting ‘misleading on-line campaigns’ concentrating on the United States and different nations. Chinese officers have refuted the accusation.
Liz Allen, the U.S. undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs, is touring to Asia this week. Allen met along with her South Korean counterpart Friday and sealed the settlement with South Korea on countering disinformation.
South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs mentioned in an announcement on Friday that each nations shared considerations over ‘dissemination of false data and abroad data manipulation’ that pose a transnational menace, and a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was signed to strengthen the cooperation in these areas.
U.S. President Joe Biden, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida have agreed to search out methods to coordinate joint efforts to counter disinformation, after the three leaders held talks in the course of the first trilateral summit at Camp David in August.
‘President Yoon talked about the menace from false propaganda and disinformation in his deal with to the Joint Session of U.S. Congress in April. In this regard, we are actually discussing the doable follow-up measures with the U.S.,’ an official from the South Korean Embassy advised Voice of America on Thursday.
In an announcement on Thursday, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul condemned the ‘more and more misleading on-line campaigns concentrating on the U.S. and different nations’ by the Chinese Communist Party.
‘The CCP has made clear it would use each tactic to unfold its malign intent,’ the Republican congressman mentioned.
The South Korean authorities has recognized 38 suspected pretend Korean-language news web sites that it believes are operated by Chinese corporations. For instance, in November, South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) mentioned two Chinese public relations corporations, Haimai and Haixun, had been allegedly creating such web sites, in accordance with Seoul-based Yonhap News Agency.
The State Department mentioned Allen, whereas in Tokyo, will maintain bilateral discussions with Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs officers that embody a concentrate on countering malign overseas affect.
In a report issued in September, the State Department’s Global Engagement Center accused the Chinese authorities of utilizing a mix of techniques in a bid to create a world by which Beijing, both explicitly or implicitly, controls the circulate of vital data. The U.S. has warned that China is pouring billions of {dollars} into efforts to reshape the worldwide data atmosphere and, ultimately, bend the need of a number of nations to Beijing’s benefit.
US Warns of China’s Plans for Information Domination
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs has pushed again, calling the Global Engagement Center the command middle of ‘notion warfare.’ James Rubin, particular envoy for the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, has mentioned that Washington is working with allies to detect and counter misinformation and disinformation all over the world.
VOA Interview: US Intends to Sign More Agreements With Allies to Counter Disinformation
In May, the U.S. signed a Memorandum of Understanding with North Macedonia, and in September, one other with Bulgaria, each aimed toward enhancing cooperation in countering overseas data manipulation.
This corrects the earlier model of this story that erroneously named Japan as being a part of the MOU. We remorse the inconvenience.