Search Results for: "national security law"

June 11, 2018

Guest Post: Blue House Chief of Staff Im Jong-seok vs. Dr. Ji Man-won: Im sues Ji for defamation; Ji sues Im for National Security Law violations

The following guest post is submitted by Dr. Tara O. While I’m writing about the Circus in Singapore, Dr. O informs us about far more consequential things for Korea’s future. ~   ~   ~ On May 31, 2018, Im Jong-seok (임종석) (age 51), the Blue House Chief of Staff, sued Dr. Ji Man-won (지만원) (age 75) for defamation. Im also sued a small, online independent news outlet called Newstown (http://www.newstown.co.kr/), which publishes Dr. Ji’s work, and others for defamation at the same time. Dr. Ji,...

Categories An Alliance?/Censorship/Democracy/Korean Politics/Korean War II/The Fifth Column
June 8, 2020

The N.Y. Times, the Ningpo 12, Minbyun & Yoon Mee-hyang: The Story Behind the Story

Warning: This one is a long read. There are a lot of threads to pull together. In the end, I believe the implications for South Korea’s democracy, the human rights of North Koreans, and the accuracy of the news you read are grave enough to justify the effort to write (and hopefully, to read) it. ~ ~ ~ Since the announcement of their group defection in April 2016, this blog has paid close attention to the case of the Ningpo...

Categories Defectors/Human Trafficking/Korean War II/Media Criticism/Refugees/Subversion/The Fifth Column
April 2, 2019

“Liberal” South Korean authorities launch criminal investigation of political parody posters

At the heart of the First Amendment is the recognition of the fundamental importance of the free flow of ideas and opinions on matters of public interest and concern. “[T]he freedom to speak one’s mind is not only an aspect of individual liberty — and thus a good unto itself — but also is essential to the common quest for truth and the vitality of society as a whole.” – Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell, 485 U.S. 46, 50-51 (1988)....

Categories Censorship
April 1, 2019

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...

Categories Censorship
September 24, 2018

From Sunshine to solar eclipse: Can Moon Jae-in censor his way to reunification?

FOR MORE THAN 20 YEARS, THE STATED PREMISE OF THE SUNSHINE THEORY of “engagement” with the regime in Pyongyang has been that economic incentives and integration would gradually draw it into the community of civilized nations and spur political reform, disarmament, peace, and eventual reunification. The Sunshine Policy and its progeny promised that the gentle suasion of liberalization would win over even those responsible for “crimes against humanity, arising from ‘policies established at the highest level of State,’” including as...

Categories Censorship
August 24, 2018

Why the domestic troubles of Trump & Moon are grave news for Koreans

POLITICIANS DO THEIR WORST DIPLOMACY WHEN THEY’RE WEAK AT HOME. SCANDAL TEMPTS THEM TO SEEK GLORY ABROAD. The hyenas of the world’s ecosystem see them limp and decide to prey on them, or on the calves they can’t protect. Of Mr. Trump’s troubles, you already know plenty that I need not repeat here. Whatever your view of those troubles, they aren’t going away, and if you correctly acknowledge their political element, they’re apt to be more serious next January. The...

Categories America/An Alliance?/Korean War II/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Politics
December 11, 2017

Korean War II: A Hypothesis Explained, and a Fisking (Annotated)

(Update, May 2018: A hypothesis should to be tested by its predictive record. I’ve now watched, with growing alarm, how events since the publication of this post have validated it as a predictive model. I’ve recently gone back and embedded footnotes throughout, to indicate which specific predictions have been validated, or not.) In the last several months, as Pyongyang has revealed its progress toward acquiring the capacity to destroy an American city, the North Korea commentariat has cleaved into two...

Categories Fiskings/Korean War II
July 5, 2016

Minbyun’s frivolous lawfare terrorizes 12 young N. Korean refugees & endangers lives.

The western association of “left” with “liberal” does not hold up well in South Korea, whose political spectrum is dominated by warring factions of nationalists. These factions wield the law as an authoritarian sword against their rivals, and as a (sometimes flimsy) shield against their rivals’ authoritarian assaults. Historically, the worst authoritarianism was on the political right before the transition to democracy in 1987. The left still fuels its moral propulsion from the nostalgia of dissent dating back to this...

Categories Defectors/Human Trafficking/Korean Politics/Refugees/Useful Idiocy
March 10, 2016

Convicted N. Korean spy now protesting against sanctions in front of the Pentagon

Years before the Democratic Labor Party lawmaker Lee Seok-ki was recorded on a wiretap plotting violent attacks in support of a proposed North Korean invasion, the DLP was rocked by another North Korean fifth column scandal — the alleged Il Shim Hue spy ring. On October 24th, 2006, South Korea’s state intelligence agency, the NIS, arrested three men: Michael Jang, former Democratic Labor Party (DLP) central committee member Lee Jeong Hun, and the head of a private education institute, Son Jeong...

Categories The Fifth Column
December 11, 2015

At the U.N., China shields Kim Jong-Un from prosecution, but not isolation (updates)

In February, two years will have passed since the U.N. Commission of Inquiry released its historic report on human rights in North Korea, finding “human rights abuses on a scale ‘without parallel in the contemporary world,’ comparable to the atrocities of Nazi Germany.” The bad news is that we’re still just talking about this. The good news is that America, and most of the world, are uniting around the importance of holding Kim Jong-Un accountable for those crimes. [Samantha Power addresses the...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights
May 22, 2015

“Arsenal of Terror,” 2d ed.: N. Korea paid dope dealers $40K to kill Hwang Jang Yop

South Korean prosecutors have indicted three South Korean nationals, identified only by the surnames “Bang,” “Kim,” and “Hwang,” for “bringing in methamphetamine from North Korea and attempting to assassinate” Hwang Jang-Yop, North Korea’s highest-ranking defector until his death in 2010. Let’s unpack these two criminal conspiracies one at a time, starting with the meth: The 69-year-old, identified only by his family name Bang, and two others have been detained for producing 70 kilograms of methamphetamine at a North Korean factory...

Categories Drugs & N Korea/Terrorism (NK)
December 8, 2014

N. Korean spy targeted refugees in the South

As much as I agree that the National Security Law is overbroad and prone to abuse, cases like this show that parts of it remain necessary for the protection of South Korean citizens, including refugees from the North. A North Korean defector was sentenced to two years behind bars on Friday for trying to pass on information about fellow defectors in South Korea to Pyongyang authorities. A local court in this southeastern city said it found the 45-year-old woman, identified...

Categories Refugees/The Fifth Column
November 21, 2014

South Korea’s illiberal left: authoritarians in the service of totalitarians

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. [Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 19] In America, we have grown accustomed to a political polarity in which we associate “left” with “liberal.” Whatever the merits of that correlation here, it’s useless to any understanding of politics in South Korea, where very few people...

Categories Censorship/Korean Politics/Refugees/Subversion/The Fifth Column
November 10, 2014

In the NYT: N. Korea, extortion, freedom of speech, and freedom of information

Professor Lee and I are published in The New York Times today, expressing our disappointment at the South Korean government’s failure to stand up for freedom of speech for South Koreans and freedom of information for North Koreans, something the Universal Declaration of Human Rights speaks to quite clearly: Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and...

Categories Censorship
October 13, 2014

Chinese behave badly in South Korea, and it doesn’t end well for them (updated).

It looks like the South Koreans may have learned something from their northern cousins about how you deal with illegal fishing by the Chinese. For years, Chinese fishermen have entered South Korean waters illegally and violently resisted arrest by the South Korean Coast Guard. In 2011, a Chinese fishermen stabbed and killed a ROK coastie who was trying to board his vessel. This week, ten the Coast Guardsmen boarded a Chinese boat fishing illegally in Korean waters, and this happened: “At...

Categories China & Korea
August 29, 2014

A victory for free speech in South Korea

”The nation’s top court on Thursday upheld the acquittal of a 26-year-old man accused of retweeting posts sympathizing with North Korea’s communist regime.” [link] I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The National Security Law is overbroad and unconstitutional (see Article 21). Clarification: It’s overbroad and unconstitutional when it’s used to censor political speech, but not when it’s used to prosecute people who act as agents of foreign governments or who conspire to commit violence.

Categories Censorship
January 17, 2014

Open Sources, January 17, 2014

~ 1 ~ THE SOFT BIGOTRY OF LOW EXPECTATIONS: North Korea threatens South Korea with “an unimaginable holocaust,” Yonhap calls it “a camouflaged peace offensive,” and the Park Administration calls it “a fake peace offensive.” I sure would hate to see them when they’re feeling surly. More here. ~ 2 ~ REIGN OF TERROR UPDATE: In the immediate aftermath of Jang Song-Thaek’s purge, the authorities conveyed a message of “business as usual” to the people. That didn’t last. Rimjingang reports...

Categories Anju Links