b. 7 Dec 1962, Seoul, South Korea

Labor media activist; community media organizer

Myoung Joon Kim was a South Korean student activist during the late 1980s, when radical student and labor groups stood at the forefront of a powerful movement to establish genuine democracy. Kim and other activists used grassroots media production to bring together diverse sectors of Korea’s social change movement, and to empower working people as media producers. In the mid 1990s he co-founded Labor News Production to create activist documentary films by and for workers. The group also focused on expanding distribution platforms for independent media, including a union-based network for sharing videos, and an international labor film festival. In 2000, LNP successfully fought to legalize community television in Korea. Kim is also president of MediACT [0], a Seoul-based center for public-access production training, media literacy education and organizing for media democracy. He continues to be a leader in the struggle against privatization of public communications resources under neoliberal “free trade” policies.