SEOUL SEARCHING

New York Times Moving Out of Hong Kong to Escape Beijing’s Crackdown on Freedoms

The news operation will move to the South Korean capital over the course of a year.

The New York Times is pulling up stakes in Hong Kong after China imposed a controversial national-security law on the former British colony to crack down on its pro-democracy protesters. The paper announced it will move its Hong Kong-based digital news operation to the South Korean capital city of Seoul. “China’s sweeping new national-security law in Hong Kong has created a lot of uncertainty about what the new rules will mean to our operation and our journalism,” Times editors and executives wrote in a memo to staff on Tuesday. “We feel it is prudent to make contingency plans and begin to diversify our editing staff around the region.” The move will happen gradually over the course of the next year. Some reporters will remain based in Hong Kong to cover the city, but the team that looks after online coverage when the other two hub offices—in New York and London—are offline will head to South Korea. The newspaper reports that some Times employees have already faced challenges securing work permits in Hong Kong.