Posts Tagged ‘South Korea’
February 2nd, 2012
South Korean prosecutors
indicted a social media and free speech activist on Tuesday for reposting tweets from a North Korean government website. Photographer Park Jung-geun was detained last month on charges of violating South Korea’s National Security Law, which broadly bans “acts that benefit the enemy”. Park was interrogated by detectives following a police raid on his photo studio last autumn. Park has said the tweets — which included reposting North Korean propaganda messages such as “long live Kim Jong-il!” and links to North Korean propaganda songs — were intended to mock the North Korean regime.
December 6th, 2011
Plans to intensify
South Korea’s review of web content, including social networking sites and mobile phone applications
have been released.
The review, which aims to combat a surge in “illegal and harmful” information online, has been underway since 2008, but the Korea Communications Standards Commission’s latest plans to reshuffle departments will make way for a review team that will oversee new media content.
Social media users and civic groups believe the new plans constitute a clamp down on freedom of expression.
August 12th, 2011
South Korea‘s government will go ahead with plans to
scrap the current real-name system for internet users in the wake of the country’s worst online security breach. Last month, personal information including names, mobile phone numbers and email addresses of about 35 million users of the country’s popular internet and social media sites Nate and Cyworld was stolen in a hacking attack. The real-name system, introduced in 2007, requires people to use their real names and resident registration numbers when making online postings on websites with more than 100,000 visitors per day.
August 8th, 2011
Why is South Korea’s blocking the website of a company that offers tours in the North? Robin Tudge reports
The website of a tourism company that takes guided tours into North Korea has been blocked in South Korea, becoming another victim to efforts by Seoul to quash all efforts promoting any kind of engagement with the North.
(more…)
August 20th, 2010
South Korea has begun b
locking access to a Twitter account opened by a North Korean website. The blocking appears to be aimed solely at @Uriminzok Twitter account’s main page address, which has provided North Korea with a platform for propaganda messages.
March 4th, 2010
A factory worker has been
executed by firing squad in North Korea for divulging information to a friend in South Korea. The man, who has only been identified by his surname Chong, was accused of sharing the price of rice and other information on an illegal mobile phone with a defector. Seoul-based Open Radio for North Korea revealed that security officials raided the man’s house and found a Chinese-manufactured phone. North Korea does allow mobile devices to be used, but their range is limited to the capital Pyongyang. The country is notorious for its disregard of human rights and has no organised political opposition or a free media.
August 14th, 2009
A group of South Korean citizens have filed a lawsuit against a Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun, for what they claimed to be a misreport. A total of 1,886 people Thursday filed a suit against the paper for a report in July last year for misquoting President Lee Myung-bak. In the suit, they asked the daily to pay 4.11 million won in compensation and print a correction. Read more here
April 21st, 2009
A financial blogger, Park Dae-sung, known online as Minerva, accused of spreading false information on the internet has walked free from court in South Korea. The “innocent” verdict is being seen as a victory for freedom of speech. Read more
here
