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State Department cites “liberal” South Korean government’s censorship

In December, I was a panelist at this event at the American Enterprise Institute. You can read the transcript here, or watch it on video here. In my remarks, I tried to put the censorship of South Korea’s left and right into that country’s recent historical context, noting the signs that left-wing leaders who emerged from a nominally pro-democracy movement were now engaging in a strategic and systematic campaign to silence defectors, vloggers, and political critics through internet censorship and defamation suits. The Korean Embassy sent its resident propagandist to that event to denounce this as “fake news,” a phrase that Donald Trump has sown in the lexicons of authoritarians everywhere. You can see me harangue him near the end of the event, after each panelist speaks and after Professor Sung-yoon Lee’s more extended comments.

As it turns out, I was not the only one who noted some of the same events with concern. The State Department’s annual country reports on human rights also mentioned a number of them:

  • “During the year there were reports that government authorities contacted North Korean refugees and asked that they withhold their criticism of the North Korean government in advance of the Winter Olympics. In other instances North Korean refugees were reportedly contacted and asked not to participate in public-speaking engagements that might be perceived as critical of the Moon administration’s engagement with North Korea.”
  • “Under the election law, the government may limit the expression of ideas that the National Election Commission deems to be false.”
  • “In mid-October the Unification Ministry refused to accredit Chosun Ilbo journalist Kim Myeong-sung, who had planned to cover north-south ministerial talks at Panmunjom. The ministry cited safety concerns and the potential effect of Kim’s ‘active reporting’ as ‘special circumstances’ in the ministerial context.” Me: State’s comment here should have mentioned that Kim appears to have been excluded because he is a refugee from North Korea. When asked, South Korea’s Unification Minister refused to say whether this meant that defector-journalists could no longer cover inter-Korean talks.
  • “The government and individual public figures used libel and slander laws, which broadly define and criminalize defamation, to restrict public discussion and harass, intimidate, or censor private and media expression. The law allows punishment of up to three years in prison for statements found to be ‘slander’ or ‘libel,’ even if factual, and up to seven years for statements found to be false…. The Suwon District Prosecutor’s Office was investigating the wife of Gyeonggi Provincial Governor Lee Jae-myong for allegedly posting defamatory comments on social media before the 2017 presidential election. Police claimed she wrote comments against President Moon Jae-in, then her husband’s rival in the Democratic Party, in December 2016.” Me: The Korean right would do much to reduce its overdraft of credibility by defending the views of someone it disagrees with politically, but this may be too much to ask.
  • “The [National Security Law] criminalizes actions interpreted to be in support of North Korea or otherwise against the state. The government used this law to arrest and imprison civilians, deport foreigners, and disband political parties. The Supreme Court ruled the NSL constitutional in 2015. As the government engaged in talks with the DPRK, NSL-related investigations into positive media coverage of the DPRK appeared to decline. For example, in December a prominent KBS nighttime talk show, ‘Tonight, Kim Je-dong,’ interviewed Kim Soo-geun, who headed a pro-Kim Jong-un group and praised the North Korean leader as a “capable and talented leader.” While many conservative members of the National Assembly criticized KBS for this segment, at year’s end none of the parties involved in the interview had been arrested or investigated.” Me: Park Geun-hye surely knew she would not have gotten away with this. Moon is confident that he can, because he knows that adoring liberal journalists gaze into his dreamy eyes and see their own reflections.
  • “The KCSC blocked 143,681 websites from January to September. The vast majority of blocked sites involved pornography or gambling; 8,063 sites, including many North Korean propaganda sites on YouTube channels and Twitter accounts, were blocked under the NSL. Although viewing websites praising the DPRK regime is lawful, disseminating information about those websites, including posting links to those sites, is unlawful under the NSL…. The KCSC determines whether posts made on social networking sites, such as Twitter and Facebook, or in chat rooms, contain unlawful content, defined as harmful or illegal speech. If the government finds prohibited materials, it has the authority to warn the user. If the prohibited content is not removed, the user’s account may be blocked.”
  • “As the government engaged in talks with the DPRK, defector organizations reported coming under direct and indirect pressure from the government to reduce their criticism of North Korea. This pressure allegedly included, for example, the termination of 20 years’ funding support for the Association of North Korean defectors in December 2017, police blocking groups’ efforts to send leaflets into North Korea by balloon, and police visits to organizations and requests for information on financial and other administrative matters.”

As the Joongang Ilbo noted, State Department reports have not cited South Korea for this sort of conduct in the recent past. For a while, I saw a relative lag in reports of politically motivated libel suits or state censorship. I even began to wonder if our criticism had given Moon’s government some pause. It now seems that this was merely the passing of the storm’s eye.