Seoul
takes aim at Internet
critics By James Pearson
SEOUL - A 23-year-old South Korean
photographer looks set to start dominating local
headlines again over the next three months as he
faces his final court appearance for violating the
controversial National Security Law.
Park
Jung-geun, who inherited the family business from
his father, jokingly likened the acquisition of
his business to North Korea's leadership
transition between the late Kim Jong-il and his
son, Kim Jong-eun. Tongue firmly in cheek, Park
re-tweeted a series of anti-South posts from the
official North Korean Twitter account and posted a
doctored photo of himself in front of the Northern
flag cradling a bottle of whisky with a sad look
on his face. Not seeing the funny side, South
Korean authorities arrested Park for
allegedly disseminating
Northern propaganda.
But although Park's
case has been well covered in the English-language
press, his uncertain fate is by no means an
isolated incident. Since Park's arrest in January,
countless other South Korean netizens have found
themselves on the wrong side of Seoul's archaic
censorship laws - not just for "acts that benefit
the enemy", as was the curious case with Park's
apparently misguided practical joke, but for
simply expressing an opinion or point of view
contrary to the aims of the Lee Myung-bak
administration.
In May, political blogger
Shin Sang-cheol published a post on his popular
political weblog "Surprise" that called President
Lee a "son of a bitch" in protest at the
controversial ongoing investigation into the
family of the late former president Roh Moo-hyun.
Shin used fairly strong language in his post to
suggest Lee and his "privately owned prosecutors"
would "taste living hell" if they went ahead with
their allegations. His rhetoric was certainly
crude, but it was no more extreme than the
mud-slinging that dominates the political
blogosphere.
Prosecutors immediately
indicted and questioned Shin on charges of
intimidation after conservative activist group
Right Korea reported the post. Although Lee's
office made no statement to the effect that the
president had felt "intimidated" (a legal
requirement for intimidation charges to be
considered valid under South Korean law), the case
was nevertheless pursued.
This is not a
new phenomenon. In 2010, Seoul-based financier Kim
Jong-ik (whose firm had dealings with a state
bank), re-posted a video parody of Michael Moore's
documentary Sicko on his blog. The video's
name, Jwiko, was based on the Korean
pronunciation of "rat", an unflattering nickname
used for Lee that has since been adopted by North
Korean propagandists.
Jwiko was the
product of a dissatisfied Korean student in the US
who felt Lee was abusing his power and former
corporate connections. It was, at best, an amateur
affair - a hastily edited and poorly narrated
series of clips that nonetheless complemented the
thoughts of many Koreans at the time. But Kim
Jong-ik's repost landed him in trouble. Lee's
administration launched a huge surveillance
campaign on Kim, monitoring his Internet traffic,
e-mails, bank statements and office. Kim was
branded a pro-North Korean leftist and eventually
had to give up his career.
In June, a
left-wing politician declared that "Arirang", a
Korean folk song, should become the national
anthem instead of "Aegukga" or "The Patriotic
Song", a variation of which is used in both North
and South Korea. Lee Seok-gi, the lawmaker in
question, argued that "Arirang" was a sufficiently
apolitical alternative that both Koreas could use,
since "Aegukga" was introduced as the official
national anthem under Chun Doo-hwan, a military
dictator. Like Kim, Lee was branded a North Korean
sympathizer for his campaign.
And in
recent weeks, a South Korean unification activist
who secretly entered the North was leaped on,
handcuffed and restrained with rope in front of
North and South Korean cameras when he came back.
His motivations in Pyongyang were unclear and
South Korea makes no secret that travel to the
North by its citizens is illegal. But the heavy
treatment of the case was confusing, hardly
befitting of a modern democracy, and easy
propaganda for North Korean media to feed on. Then
again, dressing up suspects in the "war on terror"
in orange jumpsuits, putting bags on their heads
and chaining their hands and feet is also not what
one might expect from a society that claims to
defend "freedom and democracy".
But like
many aspects of South Korean politics, the issue
seems to be one that is marred by extremes. When
politicians like Lee Seok-gi challenge the
national anthem, or Kim Jong-ik voices his opinion
against the president, they are instantly branded
"slaves to the North" by their critics who are in
turn labelled "slaves to America" by others. Park
Jung-geun re-tweets North Korean propaganda in
jest but, thanks to his immediate arrest, sends
South Korean politics spinning off at
polar-opposite tangents, and words like "commie"
and "McCarthyist" become completely normal
insults.
The progress South Korea has made
from military dictatorship to fledging democracy
is inspiring. However, its authoritarian past
occasionally seems to come back to haunt it, thus
threatening its image as East Asia's most
successful democracy. Worse still, the continued
censorship of the Internet and unwillingness to
repeal the controversial National Security Law
threaten to aggravate an already heavily censored
community of angry netizens.
Armies of
netizens called alba, a Korean slang term
used to denote part-time work, are paid to post
pro-government comments on major online news
portals. When signing up to any major South Korean
websites, netizens are required to enter their
national identification number and use their real
name, thanks to the Real Name Verification Law.
Refusing the right to remain anonymous
could threaten the democratic right of
dissatisfied South Korean citizens to dissent
against their government. According to Cho Gook, a
professor of law at Seoul National University,
"the current government has a tendency to
'over-criminalize' and unconditionally imprison
its critics for committing minor faults. It's
something we often see in autocratic nations [but]
it rarely happens in the democratic world." The
anonymity of the Internet is what made the Arab
Spring so successful; online censorship had become
synonymous with the string of repressive and
destructive regimes that fell.
Of the two
Korean states on the peninsula, the standard of
living and liberty for the average citizen is,
without question, far higher in the South. But
South Korea's outdated censorship laws threaten
the sacrifices made by many during the
democratization movements of the 1980s. Things
being worse "up North" is no excuse. South Korea
has a valuable opportunity to show its "evil"
neighbor that a modern and successful Korean state
can run without the oppression and surveillance of
its people.
Noam Chomsky once said: "If
you want a more free and democratic society, you
go out and do it." But South Korean conscripts
undergoing military service are unlikely to
benefit from Chomsky's wisdom. Much of his writing
is banned in the Republic of Korea Army for
criticizing the economic systems of South Korea
and the US.
James Pearson is
editor of koreaBANG, a
daily-updated blog that translates popular or
trending articles from the South Korean Internet
into English. He is also involved in DPRK-related
NGO work and makes regular trips to both North and
South Korea.
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