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Censorship in South Korea is the limiting or suppressing of the publishing, dissemination, and viewing of certain information in South Korea.
Subject matter and agenda
Education
On February 15th 2011, a university professor in Handong Global University was penalized for criticizing Lee Myung-bak and the university chancellor.
Internet
South Korea is a world leader in Internet and broadband penetration, but its citizens do not have access to a free and unfiltered Internet. South Korea’s government maintains a wide-ranging approach toward the regulation of specific online content and imposes a substantial level of censorship on elections-related discourse and on a large number of Web sites that the government deems subversive or socially harmful. The policies are particularly strong toward suppressing anonymity in the Korean internet.
The OpenNet Initiative classifies Internet censorship in South Korea as pervasive in the conflict/security area, as substantial in the social area, and found no evidence of filtering in the political and Internet tools areas. In 2011 South Korea was included on Reporters Without Borders list of countries Under Surveillance.
In September 2004, North Korea launched the Kim Il-sung Open University website, www.ournation-school.com. Only three days later, Internet providers in South Korea were ordered by the National Police Agency, National Intelligence Service (NIS) and the Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) to block connections to the site, as well as more than 30 others, including Minjok Tongshin, Choson Sinbo, Chosun Music, North Korea Info Bank, DPRK Stamp and Uriminzokkiri.
In 2007, numerous bloggers were censored and their posts deleted by police for expressing criticism of, or even support for, presidential candidates. This even lead to some bloggers being arrested by the police. Subsequently in 2008, just before a new presidential election, new legislation that required all major internet portal sites to require identity verification of their users was put into effect. This applies to all users who add any publicly viewable content. For example, to post a comment on a news article, a user registration and citizen identity number verification is required. For foreigners who do not have such numbers, a copy of passport must be faxed and verified. Although this law was initially met with public outcry, as of 2008, most of the major portals, including Daum, Naver, Nate, and Yahoo Korea, enforce such verification before the user can post any material that is publicly viewable.
Also, South Korea has banned at least 31 sites considered sympathetic to North Korea through the use of IP blocking. The actions may be in response the to the North's clampdown on Southern radio and television, which has been severely restricted for a long time.
Most North Korean websites are hosted overseas in the United States, Japan and the People's Republic of China. Critics say that the only practical way of blocking a webpage is by denying its IP address, and since many of the North Korean sites are hosted on large servers together with hundreds of other sites, the impact on the number of real blocked pages increase significantly. Estimates are that over 3,000 additional webpages are rendered inaccessible.
Since 2008 illegal websites such as unrated games, pornography, gambling, etc., have also been blocked. Attempts to access these sites are automatically redirected to the warning page showing "This site is legally blocked by the government regulations."
Search engines are required to verify age for some keywords deemed inappropriate for minors. For such keywords, age verification using national identity number is required. For foreigners, a copy of passport must be faxed to verify the age. As of 2008, practically all large search engine companies in South Korea, including foreign-owned companies (e.g. Yahoo! Korea), have complied with this legislation. In April 2009 when the Communication Commission ordered user verification be put on the system at YouTube, Google Korea blocked video uploading from users whose country setting is Korean.
In August 2010, the South Korean government blocked a twitter account operated by the North.
South Korean president Lee Myung-bak's year 2011 policies include cracking down on pro-North Korean comments on social network sites like Facebook and Twitter.
On December 21, 2010, the Korea Communications Commission controversially announced that it is planning to create a guideline about monitoring the internet content in case of a tense political situation; automatically deleting any online anti-governmental message that could lead to internet censorship.
In January 2011, a South Korean man was arrested for praising North Korea through social networking sites.
Music
In November 2010, a woman was sentenced to two years in prison for the possession of MP3s of instrumental music, on the grounds that the titles constituted praise of North Korea, notwithstanding the actual music's lack of lyrics.
Government Youth Commission classifies songs as "medium offensive to youth" for songs that they consider it "stimulates sex desire or sexually explicit to youth", "urges violence or crime to youth", "glamorizes violence such as rape, and drugs"...
Broadcasting
The Korea Communications Commission is a government agency that censors TV, radio, and internet within South Korea.
See also
References
- Kim (김), Se-hun (세훈) (2011-02-16). ""비판교수 재갈물리기?"…한동대, 정부 비난 교수 징계 논란". NoCut News (in Korean). Retrieved 2011-03-12.
- ^ "ONI Country Profile: South Korea", OpenNet Initiative, 26 December 2010
- "Countries under surveillance: South Korea", Reporters Without Borders, 12 March 2011
- "Tough content rules mute Internet election activity in current contest: Bloggers risk arrest for controversial comments". JoongAng Daily. 17 December 2007. Retrieved 17 December 2007.
- "Do new Internet regulations curb free speech?", Kim Hyung-eun, Korea JoongAng Daily, 13 August 2008
- Christian Oliver (1 April 2010). "Sinking underlines South Korean view of state as monster". London: Financial Times. Retrieved 2 April 2010.
- Automatic redirect to KCSC Warning
- "Searching For An Adult Topic? You’ll Have To Prove Your Age To Google Korea", Search Engine Land, 17 May 2007
- 한국 국가설정시 업로드 기능을 자발적으로 제한합니 (Video uploads limited by voluntarily setting country code to South Korea), The Official YouTube Korea Blog, Blogspot.com, 9 April 2009
- Williams, Martyn (August 20, 2010 (2010-08-20)). "South begins blocking North Korean Twitter account". Reuters.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - Pro-North Facebook entries face gov’t crackdown 2010-12-21 Joongang-Ilbo
- 김 (Kim), 재섭 (Jae-seop) (2010-12-22). " 정부, '긴장상황'때 인터넷글 무단삭제 추진". The Hankyoreh (in Korean). Retrieved 2011-01-09.
- Kim, Eun-jung (2011-01-10). "S. Korean man indicted for pro-Pyongyang postings on Internet, Twitter". Yonhap News. Retrieved 2011-03-11.
- "S.Korea court rules pro-North music breaches law". Agence France-Presse. 2010-11-09. Retrieved 2010-11-10.
External links
- Red Still Best Kept Under the Bed by Jiyeon Lee, GlobalPost, April 23, 2009
- Is Internet Censorship Compatible with Democracy?: Legal Restrictions of Online Speech in South Korea by Eric Fish, October 31, 2009
- Collateral Blocking: Filtering by South Korean Government of Pro-North Korean Websites, OpenNet Initiative Bulletin 9, 31 January 2005
