The Marmot’s Hole

The fury and controversy over the distribution of video footage of the Kim Sun-il beheading (no, it’s not a link to the video and/or stills from the video) is really starting to irk me. For the record, I had the opportunity to watch the film, and passed — watching Nick Berg get his head lopped off was enough for me. As I posted before, the cyber fascists over at the Ministry of Information and Communications have sought to prevent video footage of Kim’s decapitation from entering Korea:

South Korea is scrambling to prevent online footage featuring the beheading of a South Korean hostage in Iraq from spreading as several foreign-based Web sites have started to post the gruesome scenes.

The Ministry of Information of Communication (MIC) on Thursday said it ordered all the nation’s Internet service providers (ISPs) to shut down access to Web sites that carry the execution of Kim Sun-il.

“We have found a total of eight foreign-based Web sites showing the savage killing since this morning (Thursday) and blocked Internet access to them in cooperation with local ISPs,” MIC official Moon Ki-hwan said.

Moon added the MIC has also cut Internet access to three other foreign-based sites, which openly announced they sought the images.

Not only that, but the guardians of public morality have also decided to play with search engines, too:

As a preemptive measure, the MIC also called for local Internet portals to ban searches using such terms as “beheading” and “Kim Sun-il footage.”

Attempts by Korean Internet users, infected by a sudden case of propriety, to attack Ogrish.com have apparently failed, however, as not only did the site get its hands on the video, but set up mirror sites and posted a warning that hackers may face legal action. Strangely enough, when you have Korean portal sites and bulletin boards actively encouraging Internet users to hack/attack foreign (usually Japanese and U.S.) websites, the MIC never seems to be around. Odd. Anyway, Korean “netizens” are apparently furious (when they’re not trying to download the video themselves) that U.S. sites could possibly circulate the gruesome video, and Naver.com has a ton of pieces on the government’s and netizens’ war against the video. Portal sites across the country are starting, “Let’s Not Watch the Video” campaigns, and some Internet users are conduction cyberwars against Arab websites and U.S. websites that distribute the execution footage (on the other hand — and it’s important that as much as I like to bitch about Korean “netizens,” they are not a monolithic group by any stretch of the imagination and there is a lot that I actually admire about the community — others are warning against causing a clash with Internet users in the Arab world).

Another website — also mentioned in my previous post — has quite a few Korean Internet users pissed off for its rather irreverent treatment of Kim’s murder.

Also controversial is the fact that Korean media companies have gotten through the government’s attempt to stop the video from entering Korea by obtaining it through Reuters and AP. News providers with contracts with the two foreign firms were able to get their hands on the footage, and there was very little the government could do about it.

Also troubling for the government is the fact that the Internet is not easily controlled, especially in the world’s most wired nation, and it’s hard to stop a determined fellow if he really wants to see a guy get his head cut off. You can block access to sites that you know about, but Big Brother can’t watch everyone all at once. Moreover, Koreans living abroad could email the video to friends back here, and from there P2P messengers distribute it. Besides, whatever faults Korean “netizens” may have, they are nonetheless a pretty resourceful bunch, many of whom are naturally not fond of state controls, especially when word goes around that the government is trying to block access to the video because Kim’s last words are critical of both Roh and the planned deployment of troops to Iraq.

There are a couple of things that bother me about all this. First of all, I don’t like Big Brother, and I especially dislike seeing Internet companies cooperate with Da’ Man in restricting possibly the closest thing we have in the world to a completely open and unrestricted marketplace of ideas. No, I don’t want to see the video — although I strongly considered linking to it here on this blog as a form of protest — and I fully understand how a great many people could have problems with people uploading the damn thing. There are a lot of things on the Internet I find objectionable, however, and I wouldn’t want the government preventing me from clicking on them. Nor would I EVER encourage other Internet users to attack another Internet user’s website; cyberspace is big enough for all opinions, and I find it simply incomprehensible how fellow website administrators like the folk who run DCinside.com could allow their sites to become forums for organizing cyber attacks on websites that offend their sense of national honor, as if the ability to crash “enemy” websites were some sort of proof of Korean strength. Regardless of our passports, once we log on, we are citizens of a common cyberspace, and assuming we don’t want some sort of Leviathan to protect us from a state of cyber-nature, we should do our best to respect the rights of others to express their ideas freely, no matter how bizarre, offensive or downright silly those ideas may be. If you want to rain abuse on some guy’s site, I guess that’s OK (although I like to think of a personal website like a home, i.e., I might be willing to make constructive criticism, but I wouldn’t consider pissing on the guy’s rug). Trying to silence a site, however, is a completely different matter.

(WARNING: Following is rant-esque. I apologize beforehand)

There is another thing that rubs me wrong here. That is, why the sudden concern? Yes, I understand that the murder of a fellow national at the hands of foreign terrorists in a land occupied by a love-hate ally might spark emotional responses that could be counter-productive. Yes, I might be able to buy arguments that watching the video is like “killing Kim a second time.” And definitely, I can see how the government might be concerned with both protecting its exposed Muslim community and ensuring that anti-Islamic feelings do not become a factor in both the Iraq deployment and Korea’s relations with Middle Eastern states. That being said, some of the outrage — especially from netizens — seems a bit ironic, because I didn’t see an outcry of concern when these same sites were posting Nick Berg’s execution, nor did I see the Ministry of Communications move to block access to websites showing the video or threatening to arrest Koreans who uploaded the footage for local distribution. I sure as shit didn’t see local portal sites or netizens start “Let’s Not Watch Nick Berg Get Beheaded” campaigns. I did, however, get to watch partially state-owned MBC run video of the murder on broadcast TV (to much public outcry and a later reprimand from the media watchdog). And that’s not all. For the longest time, on the video screen in Jonggak Station, I got to watch an advertisement by a local sports daily that poked fun at the destruction of the WTC on Sept. 11. I don’t seem to recall every major paper in Korea running stories of netizen outrage at that, or the many parody pics — homegrown and otherwise — that went round Korean cyberland that treated the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in a less-than-reverential light. You know, as a New Yorker, I still get uncomfortable watching on TV or film shots of the New York skyline — lots of focus on the Empire State Building, but an almost intentional avoidance of lower Manhattan, where two rather large towers used to be. It hurts. So yes, I read stories on netizen outrage about Kim’s decapitation video and feel the urge to flip them the bird. Where the fuck was your sense of propriety and good taste when those videos of Nick Berg were going around? Or when you were getting a good chuckle out of the mass murder of 3,000 people in America’s largest city? Or when some businessman opened up a Nazi-themed bar in Shinchon, which was shut down not by public outrage, but by complaints from foreigners and protests from the Israeli and German embassies? Yes, I know it’s always different when its one of your own getting killed — Nick Berg’s decapitation angered me in a way that watching some Russian get his head cut off in Chechnya never could. But still, I objected when some tart decided to pose for “comfort women-themed” nude photos, despite the fact that as a non-Korean, the issue is much less emotion-laden for me than it would be for Koreans.

And sometimes, I wonder where some peoples’ sense of irony has been misplaced — this (courtesy the Korean-language Pressian piece linked above), from the People’s Action Against the Dispatch of Korean Combat Troops to Iraq (Korean: Irakeu Pabyeong Bandae Bisang Gungmin Haengdong):

We must stop the distribution of the video of Kim Sun-il’s killing… As a crime that destroyed the human sanctity of the deceased, the film is leaving shock and scars that can never be removed to the family and all citizens… Moreover, we worry that distribution of the film, as it provokes emotional responses of revenge and punishment, may foster irrational feelings of enmity between the Korean people and the Arab world.”

Funny thing is, I actually agree with them, for the most part. My beef is this — this is a group that had no problems bringing with them to protests pictures of dead Iraqis or Iraqi POWs, and I seriously doubt they were concerned about the emotional responses such pictures would have on some Koreans and hence the relationship between those Koreans and the 37,000 U.S. soldiers residing in the Republic of Korea. And given the incestuous nature of these groups, I bet you dollars to donuts many of the movement’s members were the same ones carrying posters or uploading onto the Internet photos of the mangled bodies of the two school girls who were killed in an accident involving a USFK armored vehicle in 2002, without even the slightest concern for either the sanctity of the dead or the emotional responses those pictures might invoke, responses any American residing in Korea in late 2002 would no doubt be familiar with.