But there is a canyon of difference between having to send a fax or .jpg of your ID to the website in question and not being able to get on at all. I use tourexpress.com to buy my plane tickets, I use KBstar to do on-line banking, and a few other things, all with my foreign resident ID number.

I don’t think it’s easy and I think that system needs to be fixed. I know from past discussions you think this problem is insolveable because no Korean wants to solve it, but I think you’re exaggerating the problem, too, especially if you think that this desire to crack down on “cyber terrorism” is really an attempt to keep foreigners off the Korean sites.

To me, this discussion is like when certain incredulous foreigners told me foreign nationals can’t own an apartment in my own name because Korea is a bunch of racists. Paraphrase of actual conversation:

SOMEONE:
Foreigners can’t own property because Korea is a racist country.

ME:
I’m a foreign citizen, but I own my own apartment.

SOMEONE:
Maybe yours is a special case.

ME:
No, any foreign citizen who legally resides in Korea can do this.

SOMEONE:
But it’s not in your name.

ME:
Yes, it is. The apartment is in my name.

SOMEONE:
Yeah, but it’s also in your wife’s name, too. Without her name on it, you couldn’t get an apartment.

ME:
Um, I’m not married.

SOMEONE:
Then it’s in a relative’s name.

ME:
No, it’s in my name and my name only. I’ll show you the deed.

SOMEONE:
You’re making this up. Koreans don’t let foreigners own property.

It has also been suggested to me that I bribed someone, someone made a clerical error, and I have been unwittingly cheated and don’t know it yet.

Okay, I know that home ownership is not the same as Internet participation, but there’s a lot of hype out there and the hype needs to be separated from the reality in order to fix this.

Btw, ‘As is to be expected, the Korean press Is Not Amused.’ Huh? What (English-language) sites have you been reading? I just blogged on this topic last night - every single paper supports the ‘Real Name System’ except the Hankyoreh. The Chosun, Times, Herald, and Joongang all support the measure. They’ve all been referring to the Yahoo Korea poll where ‘80% of netizens’ support the measure, which sounds oh-so-convincing until you read in this article that the Yahoo polled only 1,631 people, meaning the opinion of 1,300 people supporting the measure is a ‘majority’ of the 30 million or so Korean internet users out there. The Naver poll of 7,909 people found 65% support. I wonder how much support there would have been for this measure before the deluge of ‘cyber terror’ articles.

I don’t mean to dismiss the hostile actions of some netizens that have been highlighted in the past few weeks - something should be done to discourage this behavior. I’m not sure if more regulation is the answer, but considering the Korean government’s actions in the past (routinely shutting down websites or it’s far-reaching blockade against the Kim Sun-il video last summer) and the many ways Korean netizens have already given up their privacy (needing to use their resident numbers to register with many sites), I would tend to think that many people in Korea wouldn’t see a ‘Real name system’ as an outrageous measure.

But this is a privacy issue affecting everyone in Korea, foreigners or not, so how do you jump to this being a conspiracy to blocks foreigners’ access “at all costs”?