The BBC is braced for a backlash from the North Korean government about the launch of a new service targeted at the country amid growing international tensions over its nuclear missile tests.

Francesca Unsworth, the director of BBC World Service, said the corporation was wary about launching the new North Korean service next month due to the likely opposition from the government but insisted the fragile political situation vindicated the move.

In an interview with the Guardian, she said: “We are reaching an incredibly febrile, dangerous atmosphere at the moment about that whole story, and isn’t it terrible for the people of North Korea that the only information that they getting about any of this is that woman who goes on North Korean television every night?

“We talked for many years about whether it was worthwhile doing something for the most in-need country of the world. This is right at the head of the BBC’s mission to bring independent news to people most in need – and Korea is the country most in need, followed by Ethiopia and Eritrea.”

Guam radio stations accidentally air emergency alert amid North Korea threat Read more

The service will launch just weeks after Donald Trump, the US president, threatened to unleash “fire and fury” on North Korea, which responded by announcing a detailed plan to fire missiles at the US Pacific territory of Guam.

Korean is one of 12 new language services being launched by the BBC over the next few weeks in the biggest expansion of the World Service since the 1940s. The expansion involves hiring 1,400 staff and is backed by £289m of funding from the government. Other services that are launching include Pidgin, which is spoken by 75 million people in Nigeria, Punjabi and Serbian.

Tony Hall, director general of the BBC, said the new services marked “the start of a new chapter for the BBC” and called the World Service “one of the UK’s most important cultural exports”.

However, Unsworth said the North Korean embassy in London had told the BBC “in no uncertain terms” that they did not want the Korean service to be launched.

The service will broadcast a half-hour radio programme daily, that will go out in the middle of the night so that, in the words of Unsworth, “people have the opportunity to listen under their bedclothes without telling the neighbours”.

On the potential reaction of North Korea, she added: “I met with the embassy here in London and they told us in no uncertain terms that they didn’t want us to launch this service. But one of the things I did say to them, and I think that this is important, is that we are not dissident radio.

“We are there to explain their perspective on this, we are not there to be the voice of opposition. But of course we are not on the side of governments, we are there on the side of people. That is our remit and it always has been.

Half the Korean team will be based in London with the other half in Seoul. At least one person in the team has a North Korean background.

Unsworth said it was a “tough challenge” trying to ensure the service reaches audiences in North Korea but pointed to research by KBS, the South Korean broadcaster, which found that a third of defectors from the country claim to have had access to foreign broadcasts. She also said evidence suggests that young people in North Korea are not as beholden to the regime as their parents and there is an appetite for learning information not provided by the government.



Unsworth joined BBC local radio in 1980 before rising up the ranks to become home news editor, then head of political programmes and head of newsgathering. She was named the boss of the World Service in 2014.

Unsworth said the World Service has become even more important due to the spread of fake news and the expansion of state-backed services such as Russia Today and Chinese news providers in Africa.

BBC faces new pay row over gap between World Service and news Read more

“If RT were to criticise the Kremlin they would be off the air quite quickly, whereas if the BBC holds British foreign policy or anything up to scrutiny, well we are not going to be off the air,” she said. “The Foreign Office may be writing the cheques [to fund the World Service] but there is no question that they would be able to phone up and influence any editorial agenda that we are doing.

“In a way the ones that I am more worried about are the Chinese. The Chinese are investing in Africa for instance big time and and they really recognise that if you are going to put investment into infrastructure in these countries then the broadcasting media landscape goes alongside that.

“We are in danger of handing over the international media space to people who do not have the values of independence, free and fair without favour, and they are not impartial. All over the world I see our services operating in countries increasingly under pressure from governments clamping down on media freedom.”

World Service is expanding at a time when the BBC find itself under scrutiny about pay. The publication of the salaries paid to the BBC’s top earners led to criticism about a gender pay gap at the corporation while PwC, the accountancy firm, was hired to review apparent disparities between how much employees on the World Service are paid compared to those in the UK news department.

Unsworth refused to reveal the details about the review but said she would be writing to staff about it in the next few weeks. She added: “Obviously the staff think there is an issue or they wouldn’t have asked us to look at it. So we are looking at it.”

The World Service boss admitted that the publication of the list of salaries paid to stars such as Chris Evans had affected the mood at the BBC.

“I would be lying if I said it hadn’t. There is a bit of a febrile atmosphere I would say, in all truth,” she said.</s>August 21st, BBC Pidgin launched today as part of the biggest expansion of the World Service since the 1940s.BBC Pidgin the first African digital service will provide impartial news, current affairs and analysis of Nigeria, West and Central Africa - as well as international news from the BBC’s global network of correspondents. The new service will also provide the BBC’s global audience with a better understanding of the region.

The new digital service – aimed at younger and female audiences – will also feature BBC Minute, broadcasting six times a day, with a round up of the world in 60 seconds available online and social. New programming will also feature a specially commissioned drama which will illustrate the beauty of the language and the fun people have in following the language

World Service Director Francesca Unsworth said:

“For more than eighty years the BBC World Service has brought trusted news to millions across the globe. I’m delighted that millions of people in Nigeria and beyond, will be able to access the BBC in such a popular language as Pidgin.”

Editorial lead Bilkisu Labaran, said:

“We are so proud to be launching the BBC’s first digital service in Africa. Pidgin is the language spoken among so many people across West and Central Africa and for the first time we will be connecting with the next generation of speakers. Pidgin is the common thread in the region, the language of unity spoken by people from all walks of life, and we are excited at the prospect of providing this service”

BBC Pidgin will aim to serve a younger audience and women with social media playing a key role. In addition to news and current affairs, there will be extensive coverage of culture, entertainment, entrepreneurship, science & technology, health and sport – including the English Premier League.

Pidgin is spoken by 75m people in Nigeria alone, with additional speakers in Cameroon, Ghana, and Equatorial Guinea. It is primarily an oral language, without a standard agreed written form. With the introduction of this new service the BBC hopes to contribute to the development of this language.</s>The BBC World Service has today launched the first of 12 new language services as part of its biggest expansion since the 1940s, backed by £289m in Government funding.

A digital Pidgin service for West Africa will stream the news to some 75m speakers in Nigeria alone with others in Cameroon, Ghana and Equitorial New Guinea.

Other digital and radio services, including in Korean, are to follow over the coming months. The additional services will mean BBC News will operate in more than 40 languages.

BBC director Tony Hall said the expansion marked “the start of a new chapter for the BBC”.

“The BBC World Service is one of the UK’s most important cultural exports,” he said.

“In a world of anxieties about ‘fake news’, where media freedom is being curtailed rather than expanded, the role of an independent, impartial news provider is more important than ever.

“The new services we’re launching will reach some of the most under-served audiences in the world.”

World Service director Francesca Unsworth said the expansion would “also bring benefits to audiences in the UK”.

“Having more journalists on the ground will enrich our international reporting, bringing news from areas which are often under-reported,” she said.

The BBC World Service has broadcast news to people across the globe for more than 80 years, beginning life as the BBC Empire Service in 1932.

The new Pidgin service is fully digital with six daily editions of BBC Minute – a 60-second audio news update – and two daily news video bulletins (coming in November).

Two additinal services for West Africa – in Yoruba and Igbo – will launch at the beginning of next year.

The new language services include: Afaan Oromo, Amharic, Gujarati, Igbo, Korean, Marathi, Pidgin, Punjabi, Serbian, Telugu, Tigrinya, and Yoruba.</s>As President Muhammadu Buhari’s aircraft taxied along the runway of the Abuja International Airport on Saturday, a presenter at one of Nigeria’s popular Pidgin radio stations announced to his listeners:

This Pidgin expression translates to “The president is back,” an explanation that Nigeria’s president has returned after a 103-day medical vacation in London.

Since the launch of the Wazobia FM, the first Nigerian station to broadcast fully in Pidgin, in 2007, the language has gained increased popularity as a medium of choice for broadcast across the country and the sub-region.

On Monday, the BBC launched its BBC Pidgin, the first African digital service that aims to provide news, current affairs and analysis of Nigeria, West and Central Africa, as part of the biggest expansion of its World Service since the 1940s.

“We are really excited that this is the first fully digital service that the BBC is offering in Africa and it is a really exciting opportunity for us,” Bilkisu Labaran, the BBC Nigeria’s Editorial Lead, said in an interview with PREMIUM TIMES.

“Pidgin is a real language of opportunity across the region, spoken by millions across the West and Central African region. It is spoken by 75 million people in Nigeria alone. By the time you to Ghana, Cameroon, Sierra Leone, Liberia, you are speaking to millions and millions across this region.”

The West African Pidgin English, also known as the Guinea Coast Creole English or Broken English, originated during the trans-Atlantic slave trade in the late 17th and 18th centuries where it served as a language of communication between the British slave merchants and local African traders.

It gradually spread across other parts of West African colonies as a useful trade language, particularly among local ethnic groups who spoke different languages.

There is no official figure as to the precise number of Pidgin speakers in Nigeria but estimates say as a second language, it is spoken by about half of the population – up to 75 million people. And as one moves from southern to northern Nigeria as well as across the sub-region, variants of the language are common among the speakers.

Ms. Labaran said the variants of Pidgin across the region would serve as an opportunity to encourage a lot of engagement from the BBC’s audience.

“We have a network of reporters from Ghana, Nigeria, and others so we could reflect those variations,” she said.

“But with that engagement with our audiences, we will get inputs from them or have a robust debate on what’s the best way to write this word or that word, you know, we will encourage all of that so we could engage one another in agreeing on what’s the standardized way of writing something.

“This is an opportunity, Pidgin is an informal language; it’s not a written language so the BBC sees a role here in encouraging a discourse to reach that consensus so that we will take that opportunity of Pidgin being a lingua franca across the region to communicate.”

As part of the British government’s new investment through the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, FCO, the sum of £289 million worth of investment would be channelled towards the launching of 12 new languages – six of them from Africa including three from Nigeria.

In addition to BBC Pidgin, broadcasts will also be launched in Afaan Oromo (Ethiopia); Amharic (Ethiopia); Gujarati (India); Igbo (Nigeria); Korean (North Korea, South Korea); Marathi (India); Punjabi (India, Pakistan); Serbian (Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina), Telugu (India); Tigrinya (Ethiopia, Eritrea); and Yoruba (Nigeria, Benin, Togo).

Currently, the BBC World Service delivers content around the world in English and 28 other language services on radio, TV, and digital, reaching a weekly audience of 269 million people. In Africa, contents are delivered in English, French, Hausa, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Somali, and Kiswahili.

But the Pidgin Service hopes to make inroads in a region where the language is not accepted as an official lingua franca and its use in schools are frowned upon by the authorities.

Linguists, however, maintain that Pidgin is a full language in its own right and has grown to become a language of communication among young people mostly due to its ability to bring people together as well as its expressive and fun nature.

In 2014, then US ambassador to Nigeria, John Entwistle, caused a stir among listeners when he responded in Pidgin to a question on live radio about his government’s threat to sanction Nigeria after the country had signed the Same-Sex Marriage (Prohibition) bill into law.

“People talk about sanction, no be say US government know say sanction dey for Nigeria because of same sex palava o,” Mr. Entwistle had said, which simply meant that the US government was not aware of any sanctions on Nigeria because of the Same-Sex law.

The success of Wazobia FM after its debut a decade ago encouraged the launch of other fully Pidgin radio stations in Nigeria; even Wazobia FM followed up its success with the launch of Wazobia TV in 2014.

Some young people interviewed by PREMIUM TIMES described the introduction of more Pidgin broadcast services as a welcome development.

Simeon Zagonde, a Lagos resident, said, “Personally to me, I don’t subscribe to it but not everyone understands English, to me it’s welcome for those who cannot speak English or any native language.”

Another resident, Helen Mojisola, said, “It depends on their service and the sweetness of the word pronunciation, it’s a great one but if they don’t handle it well, it may not work.”

Already, the BBC Minute (English), launched in 2015, and the BBC World Service are partnering with local radio stations in countries around the world where partners take BBC Minute and air them on their own stations, including other versions like the ‘BBC Minute On..’ which focuses on a single subject in more detail.

The BBC said the new Pidgin Service is targeted at mostly the younger – and female – audiences with social media playing a key role.

Ms. Labaran said with Africa being the youngest continent in the world, it would be an opportunity to serve its young population.

“We will be known for the content that the BBC is traditionally known for which is the core news, because this generation is a ‘switched on’ generation – they may be based in Lagos, Yaounde, or Accra but they want to know what’s happening in Paris, in Hong Kong, in Barcelona, everywhere,” she said.

“So we are going to bring that core global news that is balanced, fair and impartial to that audience but also other contents – they also want to know what Jay-Z and Beyonce are doing; they want to know what D’banj goes to do in London; what Tiwa Savage is doing in Paris.

“So it’s connecting those worlds, bringing Africa to the world and bringing the world to Africa.”</s>A new language service for digital platforms in English-based Pidgin for West and Central Africa has been launched by the BBC World Service.

Pidgin is one of the most widely-spoken languages across the region, even though it is not officially recognised.

The launch is part of the World Service’s biggest expansion since the 1940s, following a government funding boost announced in 2016.

Pidgin will soon be joined by 10 more new services in Africa and Asia.

The WS also plans to offer more mobile and video content and a greater social media presence.

It will also enhance its television services across Africa, including more than 30 new TV programmes for partner broadcasters in sub-Saharan Africa.

Arabic and Russian programming will also be boosted in the 2020 project.
• A mix of English and local languages enabling people who do not share a common language to communicate
• West African Pidgin English was a language of commerce spoken along the coast during the Atlantic slave trade in the late 17th and 18th Centuries.
• Widely used in Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea

It is hard to know the exact number of Pidgin speakers, as it is not formally studied in schools and is spoken with varying degrees of proficiency.

But in Nigeria it is estimated that some three to five million people use it as their first language in day-to-day interactions.

It is said to be a second language to a much higher number of up to 75 million people in Nigeria alone – about half the population.

And it is also widely spoken in other countries in the region.

“It’s an informal lingua franca. It is a language that really unites people and cuts across all sorts of barriers – ethnic, regional and socio-economic,” says Bilkisu Labaran, editorial lead of the new BBC service.

Although an exclusively Pidgin radio station Wazobia FM was founded some 10 years ago, the BBC will be the first to offer online services in digital platforms.

Precisely because of its informality, it does not currently have a standardised written form.

“The BBC is going to be a pioneer in this area,” says Ms Labaran, a fluent Pidgin speaker. She sees a challenge ahead – but also an opportunity in the anticipated debate on harmonising the written and spoken word.

What is on offer?

BBC Pidgin will provide a mix of local, regional and international news current affairs and analysis – bringing the world to the region and vice-versa.

The corporation says the new digital service will also aim to serve a younger audience and women with social media playing a key role.

So in addition there will be “extensive coverage of culture, entertainment, entrepreneurship, science and technology, health and sport – including the English Premier League”.

The production hub is based in Lagos, the commercial capital, but reporters in Ghana and Cameroon as well as Nigeria itself will also be on the ground gathering news.

In addition to Pidgin, Nigerians will also soon be able to access services for Yoruba and Igbo , complementing the current Hausa service and English output.

As well as at bbc.com/pidgin the new service is also on Facebook and Instagram.</s>Elmina (C/R), Aug. 20, GNA - The Ghana Police Service (GPS) would soon launch a 'transformational Agenda' aimed at putting pressure on Government to adequately equip the Service to better carry out its duties.

The "Agenda' also seeks to help make the Ghana Police Service a world-class police service, using democratic policing principles and best practices for the execution of its statutory objectives.

Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Dr Benjamin Agordzo, Director at the Transformational Office of the GPS said this at the opening of the 5th biennial general meeting of the "Course 40 Association" of the GPS at Elmina on Saturday.

The meeting, which was held under the theme 'the Transformational agenda: expectations and role of commanders', offered members of "Course 40" to deliberate on issues affecting the police service and how they could help improve the standards of policing in Ghana.

He expressed worry that Ghanaians unduly castigated the police for non-performance and label its personnel as unprofessional even though it was inadequately resourced to deliver on its statutory mandate.

ACP Dr Agordzo said though it is mandatory for the State to equip and maintain the Police Service, a lot was expected from the Service.

It is therefore out of place for the public to constantly castigate them for non-performance without consideration to the virtually non-availability of the resources and logistics needed for its smooth operations.

Ironically, he said, personnel of the Service who were constantly castigated, performed creditably on international assignments with the United Nations (UN), African Union (AU) and other international organisations because all the necessary policing logistics and resources were available.

ACP Dr Agordzo said the irony meant that some gaps were left un-addressed in the GPS must be given attention or else there was no moral justification for people to blame the Police for non-performance.

He said in-service training was very vital to the performance of its personnel but lack of funds to organise regular training as bane of the Service adding that 'it is pathetic that some personnel have been in the service for more than ten years but have not been given any in-service training".

Superintendent Alfred Kudah, President of the Course 40 Association, said the theme for the meeting was carefully selected to ensure that commanders embraced the transformation needed to improve work performance in the Service.

He expressed optimism that commanders would appreciate the issues better and help in transforming the police service.

Superintendent Kudah said policing is a shared responsibility and appealed to the general public to show interest and assist the police to provide maximum security and protection of property by volunteering vital information on criminals' hideouts.</s>An editorial in North Korea’s official Rodong Sinmun newspaper on August 20 sharply attacked the annual U.S.-South Korean Ulchi Freedom Guardian joint military exercise with South Korea. set to start on August 21. The North Koreans warned that the exercise will be “adding fuel to the fire” of already heightened tensions between Pyongyang and the United States and its allies.

The Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercise involves 50,000 South Korean troops alongside 17,500 U.S. troops this year. The exercise was initiated in 1976 and is conducted annually during August or September. North Korea routinely denounces the exercise held each year, describing it as preparation for war.

The North Korean message in Rodong Sinmun used ominous language, “The Trump group's declaration of the reckless nuclear war exercises against the DPRK ... is a reckless behavior driving the situation into the uncontrollable phase of a nuclear war,” the editorial stated using the acronym for Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, North Korea’s official name.

The editorial described North Korea as the “strongest possessor” of intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of striking the U.S. mainland from anywhere.

“The Korean People’s Army is keeping a high alert, fully ready to contain the enemies. It will take resolute steps the moment even a slight sign of the preventive war is spotted,” it read. However, the editorial did not explain what it meant by “preventive war.”

It went on to state that “no one can guarantee that the exercise won’t evolve into actual fighting.

“If the United States is lost in a fantasy that war on the peninsula is at somebody else’s door far away from them across the Pacific, it is far more mistaken than ever.”

The strong rhetoric unleashed by the North Koreans was merely an extension of what has transpired in recent months, as the West has responded to North Korea's continued testing of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. North Korean Leader Kim Jong-un escalated his rhetoric after the UN Security Council recently levied sanctions against his regime on August 5 as a punitive measure in response to Pyonyang’s two ballistic missile tests in July.

President Trump warned on August 8: “North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.”

Trump explained the reason for his strong language by stating that Kim Jong-un has been “very threatening beyond a normal statement.”

Following Trump’s statement, a spokesman for the Korean People’s Army (KPA) told KCNA (the Korean Central News Agency) that it would carry out a pre-emptive operation if there were signs of U.S. provocation and threatened to fire a long-range missile against the U.S. base in Guam.

During a stopover in Guam on August 9, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson urged Americans to remain calm, saying he doesn’t believe there is “any imminent threat” from North Korea. Tillerson also defended Trump’s strongly worded comments, stating, “What the president is doing is sending a strong message to North Korea in language that Kim Jong Un can understand, because he doesn’t seem to understand diplomatic language. I think the president just wanted to be clear to the North Korean regime on the U.S.’s unquestionable ability to defend itself, will defend itself and its allies.”

We posed a question in an article on August 9 that focused on the war of words between North Korea and the United States: “Considering that North Korea is so technologically backward that it has difficulty in maintaining its electrical grid, can anyone believe that it poses any realistic military threat against the world’ greatest superpower?”

In that article, we noted that the usual explanation is that North Korea is a “rogue” state whose leader’s bravado exceeds his common sense. However, a better explanation was provided by The New American's foreign correspondent, Alex Newman, in the cover article (“North Korea: Globalist Pawn?”) for the August 21 print edition of this magazine:

Far from being “alone,” the communist regime in North Korea has had friends in high places from the beginning, and still does today. First and foremost, the regime is a puppet and close ally of the powerful communist dictatorship enslaving mainland China’s 1.3 billion people — a regime that is increasingly projecting its power globally.

Newman went on to write: “In summary, the regime in North Korea is best understood as a puppet of the regime in Beijing.”

The usual responses to North Korea’s sabre rattling and testing of ballistic missiles are both military and economic. We display a massive show of military might, such as the current exercise with South Korea and moving a third carrier strike force to the Western Pacific, supposedly to show the North Koreans that we mean business. The other response was exhibited by UN Ambassador Nikki Haley’s actions at the UN to campaign for greater UN sanctions against the Pyongyang regime. However, such an action merely plays into the hands of the globalists who seek to use manufactured crises such as the ongoing tensions between Pyongyang and Washington to empower the UN.

As Newman noted in his article:

So while the facts do not suggest North Korea is harmless — far from it — they do suggest that expecting to use the UN, Beijing, or both to somehow “deal” with the threat of North Korea is an absurd proposition at best. Indeed, as the evidence shows, the UN and Beijing are two of the key powers responsible for creating the North Korea threat in the first place. Instead, simply pulling the US government out of the UN and defunding it, along with stopping the subsidies to Kim’s murderous regime, would do more damage to Pyongyang than anything attempted thus far.

We recommend reading the entire article to gain a greater understanding of the powers working behind the scenes to prop up the North Korean regime and use it as part of their scheme to build a global empire under the auspices of the UN.

China Says It Will Remain Neutral if U.S. Retaliates Against North Korean First Strike

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In Test That Will Send Message to N. Korea, U.S. Successfully Intercepts ICBM

Successful Test of THAAD Anti-missile System Offers Hope for U.S. Defense

Aircraft Carriers Gather Off N. Korea; Pyongyang Tests Missile Able to Hit Ships

Recently Tested North Korean ICBM Said to be in Range of Most of U.S.
The director of the BBC World Service says it is prepared for the North Korean government's reaction over the targeted launch of a radio service on North Korea in September, despite the recent international tensions. The North Korean embassy in London has already told the BBC "in no uncertain terms" that Pyongyang does not want any such service.