Search Results for: censorship

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...

How censorship is leading Korea to ruin

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] Last year, I wrote a post, which I fear is already becoming prescient, about how North Korea could plausibly win the Korean War. In condensed form, the strategy involves Pyongyang leveraging its nuclear, cyber, and chemical weapons supremacy...

Obama sanctions enablers of censorship in Iran, Sudan & Syria (but not North Korea)

Another announcement, last week, from the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control: Barracuda Networks, Inc. (“Barracuda U.S.”), of Campbell, California, has agreed to pay $38,930 on behalf of itself and its United Kingdom subsidiary, Barracuda Networks Ltd. (“Barracuda U.K.”), (collectively “Barracuda”) to settle potential civil liability for alleged violations of the Iranian Transactions and Sanctions Regulations, 31 C.F.R. part 560;1 the Sudanese Sanctions Regulations, 31 C.F.R. part 538, and the Syrian Sanctions Regulations, 31 C.F.R. part 542. From...

Kim Jong Un’s censorship knows no limits or borders. To submit to it is to forfeit freedom.

If Kim Jong Un is weighing whether to answer leaflets from South Korea with artillery, it won’t discourage him that many on South Korea’s illiberal left have already begun to excuse him for it. Within this confused, transpatriated constituency, there is much “anxiety” lately about “inter-Korean tensions.” Those tensions have risen since North Korea has begun threatening to shell the North Korean defectors who send leaflets critical of Kim’s misrule across the DMZ. But then, any rational mind can see...

Then they came for the Germans: N. Korea’s global censorship campaign

Having seen “The Interview,” I’d rate it as good an artistic fit for the Berlin Film Festival as Klaus Nomi might have been for the half-time entertainment at a tractor pull. North Korean diplomats, however, aren’t widely esteemed for certain qualities — like, diplomacy, or diplomacy, academic rigor, or cultural sophistication. Consequently, when they heard that “The Interview” was to open in Germany on February 5th, they misunderstood that it was on the festival agenda. And they said this: The North...

South Korea’s censorship problem isn’t just about chromosomes

One of the most bipartisan political traditions in South Korea’s young democracy is the tendency of its presidents to use tax audits, prosecutions, libel suits, and state-subsidized street violence to censor their political opponents. This has always been wrong, but in America, our condemnation of it has always been selective. Nobel Peace Prize winner Kim Dae Jung used tax audits to harass conservative newspapers. His successor, the leftist* Roh Moo Hyun, sued four right-wing newspapers for $400,000 each over what...

AP VP denies N. Korean censorship, says he’s being treated well, confesses to “brigandish madcap war crimes.”

“KIM JONG” BILL RICHARDSON’S FIXER, TONY NAMKUNG, is one of those people who is so thoroughly despised by some North Korea watchers that they hesitate to express their views without consulting their lawyers. I know I should explain, but I haven’t consulted my lawyer. Instead, I’ll again refer you to this piece by Nir Rosen that paints Namkung in an unflattering light (without even seeming to try to do so).  This week, Don Kirk convinces me that I don’t care much for Tony Namkung, either:...

The Wisdom of Kim Dae Jung: Slavery Is Prosperity, Censorship Is Freedom, Terror Is Peace

No matter what the North Koreans do with Kaesong next week or next year, their actions last week have already assured that it will fail to attract the international investment it needs to succeed. The North having demonstrated its willingness to hold potential investors’ capital hostage to their political whims, those investors will now stay away in droves. It’s worth reviewing just how grandiose the dream of Kaesong had become so recently. If you recognize the url stamped onto this...

Members of China’s Elite Denounce Censorship

[Updated 2/16; scroll down]   This looks like very good news for China: A dozen former Communist Party officials and senior scholars, including a onetime secretary to Mao, a party propaganda chief and the retired bosses of some of the country’s most powerful newspapers, have denounced the recent closing of a prominent news journal, helping to fuel a growing backlash against censorship. The trigger for the protest letter, which was leaked to journalists, was the closing of a Chinese newspaper...

S. Korean Court Rejects Censorship of Newspaper’s ‘Malicious’ Editorial

Yes, we’re talking about South Korea, where thankfully, the courts still stop obvious government efforts to smother the free press. The Supreme Court ruled that journalistic opinions or criticism cannot be considered malicious reporting, and that they are exempt from being subjected to malicious reporting lawsuits. Through this ruling, the Supreme Court suggested detailed standards of differentiating an “actual report” from “expression of opinion or criticism” for the first time. This judgment will set a precedent for indiscriminate lawsuits filed...

Bloggers and Congress Undermine Chinese Internet Censorship

The New York Times doesn’t think China’s internet censorship schemes are going to work, thanks, in part, to bloggers. Microsoft alone carries an estimated 3.3 million blogs in China. Add to that the estimated 10 million blogs on other Internet services, and it becomes clear what a censor’s nightmare China has become. What is more, not a single blog existed in China a little more than three years ago, and thousands upon thousands are being born every day — some...

The Chosun Ilbo and Censorship

While I would agree that the current South Korean government has tried to intimidate and weaken opposition newspapers, I nonconcur with the implication that disputing the accuracy of articles is a subterfuge for censorship. I’m not comfortable with ajumma-state arbitration/oversight boards that are vulnerable to political packing–fair enough. I have the same concerns about our own FCC and the Fairness Doctrine. But if the Chosun Ilbo wants free-speech martyr status, it will first need to persuade me that there’s a...

Censorship?

Count me as a soldier in The Big Hominid’s flame war against the South Korean Ministry of Truth, but it’s hard for me to get as excited about hit counters as I do about beatings, arrests, isolation, and intimidation of dissenters with the apparent cooperation / acquiesence of the South Korean government. The Marmot, ever careful to avoid a hasty conclusion, doesn’t accuse the MIC of censorship (ahem, are you listening, Korea Herald?). Blocking blogs–even for nearly a week–may or...

Censorship?

Count me as a soldier in The Big Hominid’s flame war against the South Korean Ministry of Truth, but it’s hard for me to get as excited about hit counters as I do about beatings, arrests, isolation, and intimidation of dissenters with the apparent cooperation / acquiesence of the South Korean government. The Marmot, ever careful to avoid a hasty conclusion, doesn’t accuse the MIC of censorship (ahem, are you listening, Korea Herald?). Blocking blogs–even for nearly a week–may or...

No, North Korea did not “manage” COVID. It piled famine on plague.

The editors of 38 North are smart, well-informed people, and so I’m puzzled by their decision to publish this submission by Heeje Lee and Samuel S. Han, a dentist and a research assistant, declaring Kim Jong-un’s victory over COVID. Unlike the usual suspects, Lee and Han don’t avoid all criticism of the North Korean system, its leaders, or its policies. They acknowledge “the weak state of the country’s health care system,” concede its widespread malnutrition, and lack of a COVID...

Moon Jae-in’s Wednesday Night Massacre threatens the rule of law in Korea

IF ONLY HE’D MASSACRED THEM ON A SATURDAY NIGHT, the metaphor would have been impeccable. But when South Korea’s President, Moon Jae-in, directs his Justice Minister, Choo Mi-ae, to reassign 32 prosecutors as they closed in on political corruption in his office–four months before elections will decide whether his party will have a majority to pass laws or a supermajority to amend the Constitution–it should have been the biggest news since the impeachment of his predecessor, Park Geun-hye. Last night,...

How South Korea’s “human rights lawyer” president waged a quiet war to silence North Korea human rights activists

The Chosun Ilbo has published a Korean-language interview with Lee Young-hwan, the head of the Transitional Justice Working Group, one of the most respected human rights groups researching Kim Jong-un’s crimes against humanity. Although TJWG is based in Seoul and headed by a Korean, it’s really an international NGO with both Korean and foreign staff. Lee has been an activist for human rights in the North since the late 1990s, and received a Democracy Award from the National Endowment for...

S. Korea’s ruling party thinks Korean journalists must “contribute to peaceful reunification, national reconciliation & the restoration of national homogeneity”

I often reflect on how life has been kind to me lately. Once, I was poor and cold; now, I live in comfort and warmth. Once, I struggled to eat enough; now, I struggle to eat less. Once, life was enclosed in the ennui of poverty, isolation, and the prospect of a life lived in dullness and pointlessness; now, life is endlessly interesting. Once, I was alienated and alone; now, I come home to my best friends, including the two...