By SHELTON BUMGARNER
Marmot’s Hole Guest Blogger
Some countries celebrate their independence day by drinking beer, shooting fireworks and eating weenies. Some celebrate by drinking vodka and wishing they weren’t independent. While other countries, well, they drink soju, quietly beat their historical enemy in soccer and…and…squelsh freedom of speech online in deference to same enemy!
Yes, it is currently suspected that from Friday night to no later than Tuesday afternoon, the Korean Illuminati Ministry of Information and Communication decided to allow representatives of their wayward northern brothers to visit unbothered by blogger verbal pinpricks.
The blackout reportedly affected only blogs using the Blogger and Typepad services. If the block was indeed premeditated, then not all Korean service providers went along, because there were reports of unfettered access throughout the blackout days. Other users discovered they were being protected from viewing “naughty things” without their knowledge or consent.
I got interested about the source of this year??s version of censorship so I decided to give Ogrish.com a visit. Last year it was also included in the list of sites that was blocked. To what should my wondering eyes appear, but a little girl, a potato, and a whole bunch of nonsense. Quoted text from the image above:
???????? ???????????? (???????????? ??????????)
?????????????? ????, ??????, ?????, ????????????? ???? ???? ????? ????? ??????????????.? ?????????? ??????????????????. ??3,000???/ID??
??????????? ??????????? ????????? ????????????? ?????????? ???????????.
Megapass Clean Child Service (Harmful Site Blocking Service)
A service that blocks the source of sites with lewdness, violence, gambling, suicide, etc. on the Internet.This is a paid service. 3,000 Won a month per ID.
Clean Child Service is being provided as a standard service to you, the customer.
So not only is KT providing this to me as a ???standard service,?? which is to say they signed me up themselves, but they are charging me to be blocked from sites I didn??t ask to be blocked. Those damn crazy moral capitalists. They want to protect me and rape me at the same time. Slap a cute little Korean girl on it and pray we don??t know the difference? Well suck me sirs. You??re getting a phone call on Tuesday. I??ll tell you where to put that potato.
If the blackout was orchestrated by the Korean government, it is reminiscent of a similar instance last year when the Ajumma State sought to shield citizens from the admittedly gruesome video of a Korean national being beheaded. Some of netizens affected were able to circumvent the blackout by using proxy servers such as Unipeak.
Kevin “BigHominid” Kim gave the MIC a piece of his mind regarding the issue:
I am writing to your office to protest this blockage, which has been reported and confirmed by a number of people. The blockage brings back memories of a similar act of censorship last year following the Kim Sun-il beheading video (early summer 2004). Is the government planning to make such blockage a yearly summertime event?
Controlling access to information is shameful, especially in a supposedly open, democratic society like South Korea. Freedom of speech is a basic requirement for a healthy society. The government has no right to control what people say, nor should it (within limits) dictate how people should act.
Censorship is rooted in fear and mistrust. It assumes that citizens and residents have no idea how to care for themselves, and that “government knows best,” which is an insulting attitude. What does the government fear from expat bloggers? Most South Koreans aren’t fluent enough in English to read the expat blogs, and besides, most expat blogs are far from extreme in nature. In fact, quite a few bloggers take the time to express their love for and admiration of Korean culture.
And it’s still possible that something else was going on.
By Tuesday afternoon, this possible kowtow to the DPRK appeared almost over.
14 Comments
I’ve said it elsewhere but given the terribly responsible and helpful information in the post above I’ll mention it here too…. never while people have been complaining have I ever had any problem accessing any blog during the time people have been complaining, not from home or other locations in Seoul.
Obviously something is wrong, but it might be worth noting that when the government _did_ block sites during the Kim Seon Il affair it did so by loud popular demand and was done so deliberately and after government announcement.
I’m betting is that suddenly there will be no more problems and no one will ever know exactly what it was that happened.
Complaining isn??t enough I strongly suggest finding the presidents name of KT or any other organization that blocks sites. That being said most of these guys have studied overseas in countries (the USofA) that have freedom of speech enshrined in their constitutions. Most likely it says this on the online CEO resume.
I say let their alma matters judge them. They make such a big stink of having a foreign education that is supposed to make them more enlightened than a lowly Korean education. It won??t ad up to much but certainly will piss off the higher ups. The Korean weak underbelly is pride and nothing hurts it more than being flamed from abroad.
The government will have to pry free speech from my cold dead tongue.
Nothing in the Korean language media.
If this is truly a blockage of the censorship kind, it is truly dispicable.. absolutely dispicable. It will take the word “kowtowing to the North Koreans” to the next level. It’s one thing to have different opinions about how to deal with North Korea, but it’s another to control information flow using the invisible hand of censorship. I’ve a feeling most Koreans don’t know what is going on, living in an unfree country where information is strictly controlled and used for the purpose of the North Korean sympathizing government.
Kimbob, I guess you haven’t seen the Chosun article:
http://english.chosun.com/w21d.....60018.html
The norks might have been fooling some of the people some of the time, but the deluded pseudo-lefties in S.K. are in the minority.
Where did you read about the Boryat? Sounds interesting.
Ummm…I grant you Kimbob that there are outburts of childishness in Korean society that are really disappointing. On the KM cable music channel last night some Korean guy was in Myongdong asking Japanese women if they knew what Dokdo was. Needless to say, they didn’t, so he then tried to get them to parrot the Korean words “Dokdo belongs to Korea.” It was just embarrassing–turn it around and imagine the uproar in Korea if a Japanese guy tried to do that on a TV show. Still, there’s a relatively large, well-educated middle class here, and I hope they will turn out in the next election and vote out all the idiots, just toss out everybody with ideological baggage on either side of the divide. Maybe that’s too much to ask, but you never know.
Freedom of speech of course also includes freedom to say stupid things, but I sure hope Washington is paying attention to this powder blue jingo-fascist lovefest.
In the meantime, it is discovered that the Boryat people of the Siberian steppes (Russian Eskimos?) have the same identical genetic markings with the Koreans. You see, we??re all one people. I didn??t make this up, it was in the news. I always knew Koreans weren??t Mongolians.
I’ll assume by Boryat, you mean Buryat, and actually, Buryats are Mongolians who live near Lake Baikal. So when the press mentions that Buryats and Koreans are the same, it really means, “See, we really are descended from Mongolians!”
Foreigner wrote:Where did you read about the Boryat? Sounds interesting.I’ve heard a theory like that before. Something similar about the Inuit, too.
There’s gotta be a connection with various peoples in Siberia: consider Korean Shamanism whichfrom what little I know of the subjectis quite a bit like the Shamanic beliefs/practices of the various indigenous peoples living in eastern Russia.
“On the KM cable music channel last night some Korean guy was in Myongdong asking Japanese women if they knew what Dokdo was. Needless to say, they didn??t, so he then tried to get them to parrot the Korean words ??Dokdo belongs to Korea.??”
But isn’t that she might know what “Takeshima” is instead of “Dokdo”? How was this presented?
Christ… nevertheless this thing gets more and more ridiculous.
On the KM cable music channel last night some Korean guy was in Myongdong asking Japanese women if they knew what Dokdo was. Needless to say, they didn??t, so he then tried to get them to parrot the Korean words ??Dokdo belongs to Korea.??
I saw that too! The best part was when, having failed in getting them to care about Dokdo, he asked, “You know Takeshima?” When neither showed any hint of recognition, the whole “skit” fell quite flat. I do believe many Koreans do not comprehend just how little people outside Korea care about these issues.
I knew a Buryat Mongol student at Yonsei’s foreign language institute, a kid (conveniently named, as it happened, Bulat) who later ended up working for the Russian Foreign Ministry. His physical appearance was absolutely identical to Koreans’ but his food preferences were far from the mark. Some bastard stole his yak-gristle sausage that his parents mailed from Ulan Ude. He cried and cried when it was later found in the trash — nibbled on, found to be unpalatable, and discarded.
“I do believe many Koreans do not comprehend just how little people outside Korea care about these issues.”
Dogbert that doesn’t stop Koreans or their government from trying to provoke Japanese at every opportunity.
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