August 4th, 2008
S. Korea moves to tighten the Net
Even as China is being roundly criticized for restricting Internet access even for Western journalists during the Olympics, another Asian country is moving to restrict the net. Reuters reports that South Korea is starting to make moves to restrain the Net, as well.
The mass access to the Internet, which helped ex-CEO Lee Myung-bak to his resounding presidential election victory, went on to become the instrument helping shatter that popularity in just five months in office.
Now the government is working on new rules to rein in the excesses of its netizens and bring some control to the information — and disinformation — that bombards the nation’s computer screens.
What’s the problem? First it was mad cow disease. Koreans took to the Net in hysterics that new premier Lee Myung-bak was allowing US imports of beef. Among the net rumors: that Koreans have a genetic predisposition to catching mad cow disease and that a beef by-product used in diapers endangers Korean babies.
The government also says the Net need to be reined in because of rude behavior and cyberstalking. So the Justice Ministry is working on what it calls a Cyber Defamation Law.
“The reality is that we lack the means to effectively deal with harmful Internet messages,” a ministry official said.
Funny how some governments think their duty is to prevent misinformation and bad manners. Is it a cultural thing, a need to have everyone conform to centrally defined “good” behavior?
Case in point: Kweon Sang-hee, a journalism and mass communications professor at Sungkyunkwan University:
“South Korea is a leading testbed for the IT industry and the Internet media here certainly has a frontier-like aspect in leading experimental democracy. But the Internet media should also serve public good, and compared with other countries, South Korea has lacked the institutional control over the media, in which people tend to expand and reproduce unverified, one-sided information.”
There of course many who dont agree.
“The regulations violate the autonomy of the Internet and are an effective tool for tighter media control by the government,” said Lee Han-ki, senior editor at the popular citizen news Website OhMyNews. “The regulations would bring about a reverse in the advancement of the Internet media as a whole.”
