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Category: Democracy

August 11, 2008

The Freedom of the State’s Press to Deceive the People Shall Be Abridged

[Updated below] In the wake of a court’s decision ordering a retraction of a distorted, sloppy, and  false  MBC report that triggered massive anti-government protests, Lee Myung Bak is moving to clean house.   A principled approach would be to ask why Korea’s government (or for that matter, ours) is in the business of broadcasting the news anyway and just saw off this vestigial limb.  Instead, Lee is being Lee and conducting a purge. The shakeup culminated on Friday at national...
Categories Anti-Americanism/Censorship/Korean Society/Media Criticism/The Fifth Column
July 31, 2008

Court Orders MBC to Broadcast a Retraction on Mad Cow Report

A Seoul civil court on Thursday found an influential MBC report on U.S. beef health risks “wrong” and ordered the major broadcaster to air a correction, upholding the government’s complaint over the critical coverage.    “PD Notepad should broadcast a correction of its wrong piece on mad cow disease,” Judge Kim Sung-gon of the Seoul Southern District Court said in the verdict. The Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries raised a complaint against the popular MBC current affairs program,...
Categories Anti-Americanism/Censorship/Korean Society/Media Criticism
April 30, 2008

Better Them Than Us: Korean Nationalism Turns on China

As I suspected, the China’s censorship-by-thug on the streets of  Seoul is not proving popular among Koreans.  The Chinese  government seems to be coming to grips with the P.R. disaster it has made for itself.  Its diplomats, though not quite in a full kowtow position, are offering either an apology or whatever it is that  Asian diplomats  offer when national pride prevents one:  South Korea’s Foreign Ministry expressed regret Monday to China’s ambassador to Seoul, Ning Fukui, over the incident,...
Categories Censorship/China & Korea/Democracy/Korean Law
April 7, 2008

Coreana Tries to Suppress Blogger Criticism of Nazi Ads

So instead of engaging in a moment of introspection about its tasteless Nazi-chic advertising, Coreana goes after Brian for putting the ads up on YouTube. And while they have removed Hitler’s name from the ad, the obvious Nazi symbols remain. Says CNN: A Korad official, Seo Sang-hee, confirmed the ad was meant to invoke a Nazi soldier and Hitler, which she said symbolize “revolution” in keeping with the lotion’s “revolutionary” dual functions. Seo said the commercial was not designed to...
Categories Censorship/Korean Society/WTF?
April 1, 2008

A North Korean Runs in a Real Election

The Daily NK introduces us to North Korean defector Lee Ae Ran, who represents another step forward in the development of a class of post-Kim Jong Il leaders for North Korea. “I know it is laughable that a North Korean defector is running for a seat in the South Korean National Assembly,” the candidate admitted during a phone interview with Daily NK on March 28. She added, “In North Korea, if you come from a bad family background, there is...
Categories Defectors/Democracy/Korean Politics
March 19, 2008

“Most of the film had to be kept secret for the past years.”

So says the director of a new South Korean film about a North Korean orphan living secretly in China. “Crossing,” a story directed by Kim Tae-gyun and starring Korean TV star Cha In-pyo, depicts an 8,000 km arduous and lonely journey made by an 11-year-old North Korean boy in search of his coal-miner father who ended up defecting to South Korea. [….] “I had to be very cautious in making this film because of the political sensitivity of the defector...
Categories Censorship/Refugees
March 18, 2008

Rule of Law or Rule By Law?

The Hanky has the vapors over President Lee’s plans to let the police use a bit more force against violent protestors. The plans include detailed rules on the use of force, and plans to arrest people who engage in violence and cross police lines. To this, the Hanky reacts with hyperbolic charges of a return to dictatorship: President Lee seemed to have been encouraging the police when he said, “If foreign television programs show the nation’s unlawful, violent demonstrators wielding...
Categories Censorship/Korean Law/Korean Politics/Korean Society
September 24, 2007

The Rangoon Autumn

Updates below: 9/21:   Original post, background of the protests.  9/22:  Monks  march to  Aung San Suu Syi’s home in record downpour; 10,000 protest in Mandalay. 9/23:  Protests hit 8 cities; Rangoon turnout at 20,000; World leaders speak out against use of force to quell protests, but the U.N. is silent. 9/24:  Rangoon protests draw 100,000; Their hold on power seriously threatened, junta generals threaten to use force; Bush  to announce new sanctions  before U.N. General Assembly; Burmese entertainers join the opposition....
Categories Democracy/Southeast Asia
September 1, 2007

Shot for Watching ‘Winter Sonata’

“There have been two or three reports of public executions of North Korean young people in major cities including Chungjin, as punishment for having illegally copied and distributed South Korean visual material,” said Kang Chul Hwan, vice-chairman of the Seoul-based Committee for the Democratization of North Korea. “It is not an overstatement to say that the Kim Jong Il regime is waging war on the South Korean TV drama,” he said, adding that the North Korean authorities have intensified surveillance...
Categories Censorship/Human Rights/Inside NK
July 27, 2007

Watching You

I wanted to alk-tay about ina-Chay, but as it turns out, they’re listening to everything we say here.  China’s intelligence services are gearing up for next year’s Beijing Olympics, gathering information on foreigners who might mount protests and spoil the nation’s moment in the spotlight. Government spy agencies and think tanks are compiling lists of potentially troublesome foreign organizations, looking beyond the human rights groups long critical of Beijing, security experts and a consultant familiar with the effort said. They...
Categories Censorship/China
July 11, 2007

China Attacks Dissent in America and It Expands Its Power to Intimidate the Neighbors

Strategy Page says they are, and that the FBI is so busy looking for terror cells that China can get away with it: In the past year, many copies of the Epoch Times have been stolen and destroyed, and editorial staff have been physically attacked by men who appear to be Chinese. Editorial offices have also been attacked, often at night, to make it look like a burglary. China has also been putting pressure on Chinese language newspapers in the...
Categories Censorship/China/NK Military/U.S. Military/Washington Views
March 13, 2007

Breaking the Bank in Macau

[Updates: You can read Treasury’s final rule here. Start on page 14 to read just what Banco Delta failed to do to Treasury’s satisfaction. The message for North Korea’s other bankers out there is clear: ask obvious questions. Among BDA’s practices, according to the rule, was to provide a discount for a “high-risk North Korean-related bulk currency depositor” they either knew, or should have known, was laundering money. BDA obfuscated about reforms, failed to change its corrupt management, and didn’t...
Categories China/Counterfeiting/Democracy/Money Laundering
March 6, 2007

Take the OFK Statesmanship Quiz

You are a  major political leader of one of the world’s major industrialized democracies.  An actor-turned-author publishes a book in which he photoshops the name of the country’s top newspaper into a picture of the World Trade Center on 9-11.  Just to make sure there’s no room for ambiguity, he says, “I want to become a terrorist ….  The newspaper is the sole monolithic monster remaining in [this] society.” As a statesman, your response is to: a.  Jail the man...
Categories An Alliance?/Democracy/Terrorism (NK)/U.S. & Korea/WTF?
January 29, 2007

Dastardly Chinese Try to Claim Paektusan!

Update:   Yup — called it. The netizens’ charge of  the ChiCom lines was repulsed,  and the South  Korean government leads the  panicky flight … like 1951 all over again.  North Korea, whose physical boundaries are at the center of the dispute  (more), is no doubt preparing its latest draft North-South statement on Tokdo.  So what do the Chinese know that we don’t? ========================= It’s pretty thin gruel if you read the report, but on the other hand, China is in a...
Categories Censorship/China & Korea/History
January 26, 2007

Kim Jong Il, Defender of Free Speech

North Korea said on Friday the South Korean government was violating the public’s basic right to information by blocking access to Web sites sympathetic to the North. South Korea has denied access to more than 30 Web sites that it has designated “pro-North Korea” since 2004, including the North’s official KCNA news agency’s Web service and sites operated outside. “This is a fascist action against democracy and human rights as it infringes upon the South Koreans’ freedom of speech and...
Categories Censorship/Deprogramming
January 15, 2007

The China Veto

[Updated below]   For those who still doubt that the South Korean government would bow to another government’s sensitivities to cancel an artistic performance — witness the debate and denial over the censorship of “Yoduk Story” — I suppose we can now put those doubts to rest. On January 7, several major South Korean media published editorials that criticized the Korean government for kowtowing to the Chinese communist regime by canceling the New Tang Dynasty’s (NTDTV) New Year Spectacular in...
Categories Anti-Americanism/Censorship/China & Korea/Korean Law/Korean Society/U.S. & Korea
January 7, 2007

Gerry Bevers, Tokdo, and the Heckler’s Veto

Kind words about your thoughts mean all the more when they come from someone like Kevin Kim, a/k/a The Big Hominid. Kevin, who reads and writes in fluent French, speaks fluent Korean, and creates art and books that people pay real money for, is what people call a “renaissance man.” He’s even created photoshop icons for pretty much every k-blog but this one…. Kevin links to what he calls my “awesome … ranticle” (thanks!) on the Marmot thread about the...
Categories Censorship/Japan & Korea/Korean Society