South Korea

Unlike North Korea, South Korea has a highly developed Internet sector with 76.1% of South Koreans using the network. In the light of this success, the government resorts to disproportionate means of regulation. A blogger nicknamed Minerva was arrested on 7 January 2009 for affecting “financial exchanges on the market” as well as “the credibility of the nation” because of articles he posted on discussion forum Daum, one of the biggest portals in the country. One of his predictions was the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the fall of the currency, the won. This “president of the economy on the Internet” was charged with “spreading false information” and faces up to five years in prison and a fine of 50 million won (27,000 euros). The “spreading of false information” is a phenomenon that exercises the authorities. Two South Korean celebrities committed suicide in 2007 after rumours about them circulated online. That same year, police recorded 10,000 cases of defamation online, against 3,600 in 2004. Kyong-won Na, a deputy in the Grand National Party (GNP) then proposed that blogs and websites offering discussion forums that had more than 300,000 hits a day should clearly identify people posting messages, asking them their names and social security numbers. This project which is still being studied, also seeks to limit the registration capacity of these portals to 100,000. Since October 2008, nearly 1,000 police officers have had the responsibility of inspecting the content of chat-rooms and online forums. The largest access portals, Daum and Naver, have decided to get together to resist government attempts to limit criticism.