vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #150 / Special reports / Reading article...

When Japanese TV reporter Takao Jun and his crew got to the main road leading to riot-torn Bolshoi Kamen in July, the FSB stopped them.

Although the NHK correspondent had official permission to enter the striking town, FSB officers didn’t want to let foreigners in.

Reporters at the other five Japanese TV offices in Vladivostok say they, too, sometimes have trouble obtaining information. They all agree that the job is fascinating, but the bureaucracy is frustrating. It’s a part of living here, they say, something you come to accept or, once in a while, get around.

If it’s hard being a foreign reporter in a town that only recently opened to the outside world, Takao says he prefers it to his fast-paced Moscow posting.

“We were always running from press conference to press conference,” he said. Life is slower here, but the news is more exciting, says Takao.

Japanese reporters say Japanese interest in Vladivostok peaked when the city opened in 1992. People wanted to know about investment opportunities and the problems Vladivostok residents faced.

But our Eastern neighbors grew tired of the endless strikes, power cuts and political battles.

Vladivostok’s slow economic growth disappointed other viewers, say reporters. The Japanese say they now focus on the details of Vladivostok life, on the way people live.

As TV journalists, they can bring Japanese viewers concrete examples of reality here.

Andrei Glotov, a Russian who works for the Japan Sea Network, sends broadcasts to Niigata.

Instead of press conferences and updates, Niigata viewers see a side of life that foreign residents here may not glimpse. One segment showed how locals make samogon, or Russian moonshine, and another reported on Vladivostok’s version of the Hell’s Angels — bandanna-wrapped motorcycle riders who drink and ride but don’t do drugs.

Japanese correspondents in Vladivostok worry about something other foreigners perhaps learn to overlook: the violence.

The reporters interviewed for this article said last fall’s assassination of South Korean diplomat Choi, Duck-Keun changed the way they, and their employers, view this city.

NHK now considers Vladivostok to be the most dangerous and inconvenient place in the world for its journalists to work. ANN-HTB told its employees they had to move to secure apartments. All reporters from Japan now live in a building with round-the-clock security, which also houses most of the city’s Koreans.

It’s understandable that Koreans would be worried in the wake of the murder, but why Japanese? The main issue, according to Fuji Ora of ANN-HTB, is Russians’ difficulty telling Koreans, Chinese and Japanese apart.

The reporters worry that if another murder were ordered and the assassins were Russian, they could mistake a Japanese for a Korean.

Another concern is a possible North Korean connection with the assassination. “Japan and North Korea don’t have such good relations” either, said Takao. The closed country is a hot topic for most of the correspondents now, although they declined to discuss it further on the record.

In general, though, the Japanese say relations with locals are just fine. Despite Vladivostok’s 75-year isolation and rocky history with its neighbor to the east, most of the reporters here say they experience little hostility from locals. Often, they are the first Japanese a local has met, which can result in strange questions.

“One time someone asked if we have schools in Japan, too,” Takao said, laughing.

More often, they face the same obstacles as other foreign reporters — discrimination for not being local press. Authorities get uncomfortable talking about sensitive issues to foreigners, and regular people are often scared of journalists after years of Stalinist rule.

But some of the Japanese have found another path to information. Most of them employ Russians who, besides translating, ferret out the juicy stories and keep abreast of important breaking news. And if a crew from a Japanese station can’t get into an important press conference — the FSB forbids attendance by foreigners — some of the stations say they simply purchase a clip from a Russian company.

And Glotov admits to paying for information. He says “people in uniforms” often demand funds. Sometimes he uses his advantage as a Russian if sources don’t like the fact that he’s working for a foreign company.

“I’ll call someone, but when they hear who I’m working for, they don’t want to talk. Then I’ll call back and say ‘Ivan, hi, remember me? We played basketball together last week...’ They give the information right away.”