HONG KONG -- Nikkei Asia on Thursday won the top honor in The Scoop Award category at the Society of Publishers in Asia Awards for Editorial Excellence.
The SOPA awards are recognized as Asia's premier media prize. Their global section attracts entries from prominent English-language media organizations around the world.
Nikkei Asia, a Tokyo-based business media platform that publishes online news, analyses and features, was recognized in categories the competition set aside for global media.
The publication's visual investigation piece, "Is North Korea's 'princess' walking a path toward succession?" used artificial intelligence to analyze more than 14,000 hours of Korean Central Television (KCTV) footage of Kim Jong Un's daughter, Kim Ju Ae, since November 2022, and found a sharp increase in her appearances -- one that has seen her approach the same level of visibility as her father.
The visual investigation team also reviewed 6,500 pages of the Workers' Party newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, covering the three years since the daughter first appeared, tallying the number of times her name came up.
By combining open-source intelligence and computational tools with traditional reporting, such as interviews with experts and North Korean defectors, Nikkei examined the power structure of a dictatorship.
Eight television and newspaper outlets, including South Korean public broadcaster KBS and the Chosun Ilbo, cited the Nikkei report, sparking significant interest.
The story was produced by Hirofumi Yamamoto, Sotaro Sakai, Hiroshi Kuno, Takeshi Yamada, Yosuke Onchi, Takashi Igarashi and Akira Ikeya.
The judges said, "Looking at one of the hardest stories in the world to report, using cutting-edge technology and impressively vast hours of video evidence, the team reached clear conclusions in surprising detail by analyzing obscure and opaque resource materials."
The Financial Times, a Nikkei company, won the top award in Explanatory Reporting and others. Singapore-based DealStreetAsia, another Nikkei group publication, won the top scoop award in the regional media category.
