Fwd: Violation of Freedom of Expression in South Korea since 2008

[Rebecca MacKinnon]

Particularly for those of  you who are coming to Seoul, fyi.

Jinbonet, a South Korean NGO, submitted this appeal to the U.N. Human Rights
Council earlier in the year.

Best,
Rebecca

---------- Forwarded message ----------

* This is a written statement submitted to the 11 session of the HRC
by Korean Progressive Network ‘Jinbonet’

Model 1 (A)
One language (English)

SECTION I:
Contact details of (main) NGO:
NGO Name: KOREAN PROGRESSIVE NETWORK "JINBONET"
Name of main contact person: Yeo-Kyung Chang
Phone number: +82-2-701-7687
E-mail: della at jinbo.net

SECTION II:
Language(s): ENGLISH ONLY

SECTION III:
HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL
Eleventh session

SECTION IV:

Written statement submitted by the KOREAN PROGRESSIVE NETWORK "JINBONET", a
non-governmental organization in special consultative status


SECTION V:
Title:
Violation of Freedom of Expression in South Korea since 2008

SECTION VI:
Text:

 1 Korean Progressive Network “JINBONET” requests attentions from the Human
Rights Council on violation of freedom of speech on the Internet since 2008.

 2 The number of Korean Internet users reached 34.82 millions in 2007.
Internet users make up of 76.3 percent of the whole population. The Internet
is a indispensable mean for expression.

 3 Deliberation by an administrative body on messages posted by citizens on
Internet bulletin boards and deletion of them as results of such
deliberation has happened routinely. The administrative deliberation1 has
been conducted by the Korea Communications Standards Commission (KCSC) which
was established in 2008.  The subject on-line service providers and the
maintainers of bulletin boards are notified about the KCSC deliberation
decisions are formally recommendations, but , if  on-line service providers
or maintainers reject to follow them, the Korea Communications Commission
(KCC) can issue administrative orders to shut down the Web sites. Therefore,
they almost never reject the recommendations. The followings are cases of
such decisions and their results:
(a)In May 2008, KCSC recommended to “purify languages and refrain from
exaggerated expressions” on the grounds that the message called the
president “2MB” or a “sly person.”
(b)In July 2008, KCSC recommended to delete lists of advertiser on three
major newspapers which had been friendly to the government. The lists were
made by citizens who wanted to promote a boycott on the newspapers.
(c)In January 2009, KCSC recommended to delete a message that criticized
remarks by the governor of Gyeonggi province colonial and requested him to
step down from his office, on the ground that they defamed him.
(d)In April 2009, KSCS recommended to delete messages of an environmental
activists criticizing “waste cement” on the ground that they defamed cement
companies.

 4 In April and May 2008, public opposition to the government decision to
lift ban on import of  the U.S. Beef which had been believed to be exposed
to “mad cow disease” risk kept growing and is expressed in mass candle light
vigils. Related with the public protests, many citizens have faced criminal
charges:
(a)In May 2008, the prosecution held an emergency meeting and announced it
would prosecute anyone who spreads “ghost stories” about mad cow disease.
The Ministry of Justice published a list of “10 frequently asked questions
and answers about mad cow disease ghost stories” and identified Internet
messages that say things like “products made of cow including some
cosmetics, hygienic bands and diapers may cause mad cow disease”,  as ghost
stories in that list.
(b)A teenager was prosecuted because he proposed a strike of students
(refusing to attend schools) by posting messages on the Internet and through
mobile text messages. The court found him not guilty at his first and second
trials. The case is now in the Supreme court.
(c)Citizens who proposed the candle light vigils on the Internet has
experienced search and seizure in their homes and work places, and has been
arrested, detained and prosecuted.
(d)Citizens who posted a list of shop owners who claimed compensation for
damages which incurred by the demonstration and made phone calls to the shop
owners to criticize their legal action were arrested and prosecuted.
(e)A citizen who posted a message expressing her emotion to kill the
president on the Internet was investigated by the police.
(f)Citizens who posted rumors such as raping and killing of citizens by the
policemen during the violent crackdowns and arrests, were criminally charged
on the ground of circulating fabricated stories. At the first trials of
them, some of them were found guilty.
(g)Related with the boycott mentioned above in paragraph 3(b), the
maintainers of the the subject on-line community which lead the boycott have
been banned from leaving the country, subjected to search and seizure, faced
detention, and criminally charged. In February 2009, 24 of them were
convicted at the first trials.
(h)In October 2008, the fact that the government and the police had been
routinely monitoring Internet messages and collected real name information
of 700 to 800 posters was known to public.
(i)A citizen who posted articles criticizing the government\'s foreign
currency policy on Internet was arrested and detained with the charge of
spreading fabricated stories, but he was found not guilty by the court at
the first trial in April 2009.
(j)In May 2009, citizens who were suspected to post messages criticizing the
government on the Internet and bloat up the count of read of these messages
were booked in criminal case by the police.

 5 Internet messages criticizing the president, the government party and the
government-friendly mass media has been deleted indiscriminately on the
ground of defamation. Such measures has been taken under the law2 which
provides that on-line service providers temporarily delete messages that
become subject of complaints from persons who claim their reputation damaged
by the messages, up to 30 days as a temporary measure. Such temporary
deletion was applied to:
(a)messages containing a captured video of a television report which
criticized the brother of the police chief, posted on a Internet bulletin
board, on the request of the police, in May and July 2008.
(b)a message which described a government party lawmaker “dead drunken and
causing a nuisance” and included a link to the lawmaker\'s personal
homepage, in October 2008.
(c)a message that criticized the government party lawmakers and contained
scraps from news reports in regard to the accident that evictee by a
redevelopment project were burnt to death during the police tried to break
up the sit-it strike of evictee, in April 2009.
(d)many Internet messages criticizing violent methods used by the police to
suppress the May Day demonstrations on the ground that they defame the
policemen, in May 2009, .
(e)Internet messages posted by some lawmakers of opposition parties and
citizens criticizing a owner of a government-friendly newspaper based on the
allegation that he had been treated with sexual intercourse, in April 2009.

 6 New legal provisions which violate freedom of expression and make it for
investigation agencies to trace citizens\' activities on the Internet easier
were introduced.
(a)The mandatory Internet real name system  was introduced based on a
resident identification number system which gives a unique number to any
citizen at his/her birth. In 2008, the government proposed a legislation to
expand the scope of target Internet sites and the bill is being discussed in
the National Assembly. Another legislation which forces to use real names to
register and maintain Internet domain names passed the National Assembly in
last April.
(b)Other provisions in the same legislation mentioned in paragraph 6(a)
provide that if an on-line service provider fails to take temporary deletion
on request of victims, it shall be subject to a fine and on-line service
providers have the obligation to monitor the contents of user messages.
(c)The government party proposed a legislation with provisions that punish
the crime of insulting a person on the Internet more heavily than the crime
of insulting a person which is already provided in the criminal law and make
criminal investigation be able to begin without complaints of the victims.
(d)The government and the government party also proposed an amendment bill
that forces all telecommunication service providers including network
operators and on-line service providers to install communication
interception facilities and retain communication-related activity logs of
users for a certain period of time.

 7 Since 2008 when the current president sworn in, administrative control on
Internet messages is getting tighter and the number of criminal prosecution
cases against them has been increasing. It does not only violate freedom of
expression of the subject message posters, but also it has a serious
chilling effect on the general public in terms of the freedom of expression.
In this regard, the Korean Progressive Network “JINBONET” requests that the
Human Rights Council urges the South Korean government:
(a)to abolish the administrative deliberation on Internet messages, which
violates freedom of expression,
(b)to stop criminal prosecution of Internet messages which criticize the
president, the government or the government party, and also application of
temporary deletion to them, and
(c)to stop the legislation which violates freedom of expression or chills
free expression.

 8 The Korean Progressive Network “JINBONET” also requests the Special
Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on the promotion and protection
of the right to freedom of opinion and expression to visit South Korea and
also UN Human Rights Council\'s special attention.



-- 
IMPORTANT: My Hong Kong University e-mail (rmack at hku.hk) will stop working
in January. Please use my gmail instead (see below).

Rebecca MacKinnon
Open Society Fellow | Co-founder, GlobalVoicesOnline.org
Assistant Professor, Journalism & Media Studies Centre, University of Hong
Kong

UK: +44-7759-863406
USA: +1-617-939-3493
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E-mail: rebecca.mackinnon at gmail.com
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