Search Results for: censorship

October 23, 2006

First Act, Last Laugh, Part 2

I have a message  for whomever tried to stop “Yoduk Story” from playing in Seoul:  read, weep, and know that you have failed. “Whomever,” according to producer Jung Sung-San and the daily Chosun Ilbo (which backed YS), is  someone  in the South Korean government.  Eventually, the South Korean government got around to denying this.  Personally, I wasn’t there.  All I can say is that the accusation is  consistent with other things the South Korean government has done to  cover for...

Categories Censorship/Human Rights/Korean Society
September 29, 2006

Thugwatch

Now, they’re intimidating the opposition press: Chosun Ilbo honorary chairman Bang Woo-young (78) was attacked by two men in broad daylight on his way home from the family graveyard in Uijeongbu. After an event commemorating the 22nd anniversary of the death of former Chosun Ilbo president Bang Eung-mo on Friday, his car stopped to enter a two-lane road ahead and two men in their 20s approached it and smashed the rear window with bricks. S’pose there will be any arrests? ...

Categories Censorship/Democracy/The Fifth Column
September 3, 2006

Breaking the Blockade

[Update: Andrei Lankov has a must-read piece on radio broadcasting in the Asia Times Online.] Where there is demand, there will be a supply, and the trickle of alternative information to North Korea, though small, shows signs of persistence and of having a receptive market. In addition to Radio Free NK and Open Radio for North Korea, there is now a Japan-based broadcaster, Shiokaze. The DailyNK interviews its director. Although their original focus is on sending messages to Japanese abductees,...

Categories Abductions/Activism/Appeasement/Censorship/Democracy/Japan & Korea/Reconstruction/Refugees/Resistance/Uncategorized
April 14, 2006

Meet Your New Censors

They have won, and you have lost. On Wednesday, Comedy Central forced South Park to censor out one single, innocuous image of Mohammad. Because I think this is a much greater issue than just one TV show, I’m going to print Comedy Central’s entire response to an angry comment I sent that very night. Within the response, I will add my own comments. Thank you for your correspondence regarding the “South Park” episodes entitled “Cartoon Wars.” We appreciate your concerns...

Categories Censorship/Islam/Terrorism/Iraq/Uncategorized
April 11, 2006

Plenty of Room on the Stage

Oranckay has finally done it. In the span of a day, he’s joined the bulk of the IKK into a single, in-bred borg. Today, he goes to The Marmot’s Hole to defend his latest post, which links OFK posts by myself and Andy Jackson, who now co-blogs at the Hole. Someone ought to wake Dr. Hwang from his alcoholic fog to tell him a greater crime has finally been committed against nature. I make no argument with much of what...

Categories Activism/Human Rights
April 5, 2006

Who Is Ma Young-Ae, and What Does She Know?

[Updated 6 Apr 06; scroll down] Via The Flying Yangban, it looks like the U.S. may be on the verge of accepting its first North Korean refugee. Like the Yangban, I’m happy about it. Unlike the Yangban, I don’t see this as necessarily precedent-setting for the broader issue of accepting refugees fleeing persecution in North Korea. Reason: this refugee is also fleeing persecution in South Korea. No, that wasn’t a typo: Ma came to South Korea in 2000. In April...

Categories Abductions/An Alliance?/Appeasement/Censorship/Counterfeiting/Defectors/Human Rights/Japan/Japan & Korea/Korean Law/North Korea/Refugees/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized/Washington Views
March 31, 2006

WaPo: Americans’ View of Islam Lower than After 9/11

[A] growing proportion of Americans are expressing unfavorable views of Islam, and a majority now say that Muslims are disproportionately prone to violence, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. The poll found that nearly half of Americans — 46 percent — have a negative view of Islam, seven percentage points higher than in the tense months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, when Muslims were often targeted for violence. What’s...

Categories Censorship/Terrorism/Iraq/Uncategorized
March 28, 2006

First Act, Last Laugh

Update: New information (see comments) suggests that the Chosun Ilbo may have considerably exaggerated the success of “Yodok Story;” the government also looks to be backing away from denying that it put pressure on producers and investors. Update 2 (8/06): I withhold final judgment, but the preponderence of reports I’ve heard go like this: plenty of empty seats at the first curtain call, but the seats tended to fill up to nearly full with the late arrival of ticketholders. Original...

Categories Activism/Censorship/Defectors/Democracy/Human Rights/Korean Law/Korean Society/Media Criticism/Refugees
March 23, 2006

Journalistic Integrity Thwarts the Thought Police

The Korean press earns heartfelt praise this week for showing courage in its convictions, and refusing to let itself be censored by the North Korean thought police. If only their government possessed the same clarity. It all began with one of those tortuous, strictly monitored “reunions” the North permits between divided families — this one at Mt. Kumgang. A number of those present on the North Korean side were in fact abducted South Korean citizens, perhaps hoping for a last...

Categories Abductions/Appeasement/Censorship/Human Rights/Media Criticism
February 19, 2006

When Power Comes from the Wire of a Modem

The Washington Post has a fascinating look at how the Internet forced the Chinese government to retreat – partially – in its censorship of the journal “Freezing Point” (previous posts here). Why didn’t Beijing simply follow Mao’s old “barrel of a gun” formula this time? Because the Chinese economy must sustain sufficiently high growth to absorb a flood of excess laborers from rural areas to preserve social stability, which places China between the Scylla of rising dissent and the Charibdis...

Categories Censorship/China/Geopolitics/Human Rights/NK Economics/WTF?
February 18, 2006

A ‘Freezing Point’ Thaw?

The backlash against Beijing’s closure of the journal “Freezing Point” is growing in both the number and the bravery of those supporting that backlash. The reaction – in no small part due to the focused attention of the New York Times – initially forced Beijing to allow the paper to reopen, but without its two fired editors. Now, those editors have published a scathing and fearless response to the censors in the Forbidden City:

Categories Censorship/China
February 7, 2006

Key Congressional Staffers Speak Out on Free Speech, FTA

First, the obvious: the prognosis is bleak for the six-party talks. This from Democratic staffer Frank Januzzi. Januzzi spins this as Congress and the President (read: Republicans) avoiding responsibility, but a much more likely explanation is that Congress hates the deal so much that it won’t appropriate the funds to buy tribute for Pyongyang, particularly without forthcoming admissions about uranium and counterfeiting. You can’t blame any political party for North Korea’s intransigence and dishonesty. The same argument can be reversed:...

Categories Uncategorized
February 4, 2006

Can Europe Defend Its Liberal Values?

The low characters of the Muslim world are rioting and burning while their statist overlords quietly applaud, titter, and observe from their balconies. In response to cartoons drawn by Danish artists, printed in a Danish newspapers distributed in Denmark, and as a protest against the very portrayals of Islam (and its prophet) the defenders of the faith set out with such determination to reinforce. . . . Caricature (ht Gaijin Biker): Reality (ht Small Wars Journal): The charicature is relative...

Categories Uncategorized
November 1, 2005

Minister of Historical Amnesia

Updated again Nov. 3; thanks to reader usinkorea for the hat tip; thanks to the Marmot for linking and to his readers for stopping by. Once again, anti-Unification Minister Chung Dong Young has opened his mouth, and once again, nothing good came out of it. The latest nominal justification for giving Chung a supply of ink so far out of proportion to his intellect is the 55th anniversary of the Korea Times. Chung’s first sentence, however, makes it apparent that...

Categories Uncategorized
October 18, 2005

Free Speech Works: A Lesson from the South African Embassy

South Africa, the beautiful country that was my home for three glorious and historic months as apartheid crumbled all around me in the year 1990, still has a few things to teach us about how much more effective discourse is than censorship in defanging a venomous lie. While the GNP fulminates with demands to arrest extremists like Professor Jang Shi-Ki for proclaiming Kim Il Sung to be Kim Il Sung’s gift to the lesser races of the world, the South...

Categories Uncategorized
October 15, 2005

Joining the Debate

[Updated] Now this is what I’m talking about when I say that the South Korean right needs to join the public debate about North Korea instead of hiding behind morally and intellectually lazy censorship. Here is the full text of the letter, followed by Rep. Hwang’s press release: Letter of Protest To Mr. Li Zhaoxing, the Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs of China [OFK Update: A wel-informed source tells me Mr. Li is actually the Foreign Minister. Oops.]: In August...

Categories Uncategorized
October 13, 2005

An “Old Right” Circus, Starring Kang Jeong-Koo

Perhaps I need to adjust my perceptions of the Korean justice system, whose idea of prosecutorial discretion apparently makes no room for Korea’s equivalent of the attorney general to direct who gets prosecuted and who doesn’t. Because our own system protects the independence of the judiciary but tolerates political influence over the prosecution, I’m not able to work myself into a lather over reports that the Uri Justice Minister intervened to quash to prosecution–for something similar to sedition–of the manure-spreading...

Categories Uncategorized