This paper deals with conditions for the selection of subject for certain Korean verbs which show an alternation between an unmarked stem and the marking of the stem with the so‐called passive suffix. These conditions are based on the relative positions of A(ctor) and U(ndergoer) on the personal hierarchy. However, there are cases where these conditions do not hold: a pragmatic notion of newsworthiness is invoked to account for this. It is claimed that one must take into account the speaker's prerogative to assess the relative newsworthiness of reporting an event/situation from the viewpoint of A or U. The proposal to be made here is an alternative to the notion of ‘control’ proposed by Klaiman (1984, 1987) and advocated by Allan (1987) to account for the active/passive alternation in K