The other day I (and countless other bloggers) faulted Barbara Demick of the Los Angeles Times for her puff-piece interview with a North Korean government agent. My main complaint was Demick’s failure to challenge the man’s description of himself as a simple “businessman with close ties to the government.” The truth of this criticism becomes clearer with each passing day.

As I (and countless other bloggers) observed, any businessman speaking out about the North Korean government must necessarily be a North Korean government official. This is how North Korea works. But Demick never made this clear in her article.

It has become increasingly clear that this omission cannot be attributed to Demick’s ignorance of that fact. The first piece of evidence was an e-mail from Demick to a Hugh Hewitt listener admitting that the “businessman” was in fact a “North Korean official.” I asked: “Why didn’t we hear this in the article?!?!”

Today, responding to e-mailed questions from Hugh Hewitt, Demick elaborates on the man’s obvious connection to the North Korean government. Hewitt asked: “Do you believe the man you met with in Bejing and interviewed for Thursday’s story was an intelligence operative of the North Korean government?” Demick responded:

His job is to bring foreign investment and development aid into North Korea. As all North Korean business is owned by the Workers’ Party, government or military, he is a government official — or agent, as it were. He spoke in ways that other people would get imprisoned for, which means, not necessarily that he was a spook, but definitely that he is elite with some kind of tie to the top that is his source of protection.

The question remains the same: why didn’t the puff-piece interview explain this??

It is clear that, without such an explanation, some people were fooled into thinking that the views of the “businessman” were representative of the views of average North Koreans. For example, Jong-Il Park of Los Angeles wrote the paper a letter which began:

It is refreshing to hear directly from North Koreans in the article “N. Korea, Without the Rancor” (March 3). Indeed no other media in the U.S., as far as I can recall, conveyed the opinions of North Koreans directly.

How many other readers were fooled by Demick’s failure to explain that the subject of her interview was an agent of the government? (By the way, although we know that countless people have written the paper to protest the puff piece, Mr. Park’s letter is still the only one that the paper has printed in response to Ms. Demick’s interview.)

One final point: Hewitt invited Demick on his program. She responded:

I still need to get permission from my keepers to appear on the program, but I suspect it will not be forthcoming. Sorry about that.

Of course, Demick never flat-out says that she wants to come on Hewitt’s program, and I rather suspect that she doesn’t. But she certainly implies that she would do so if editors allowed her to. Let’s accept that implication as true for the sake of argument.

What is the L.A. Times trying to hide? Hewitt is not Bill O’Reilly. He has a point of view and he will express it, but he would also give Ms. Demick a chance to express hers. I think it is weaselly and cowardly for The Times to refuse to allow Demick to be confronted by people who disagree with her. I thought newspapers were all about freedom of expression . . .

UPDATE: More on Demick’s exchange with Hewitt here.