The NYT is reporting what readers of this blog have known for a while–South Korea bans games that depict North Korea in a less-than-positive light:
While American game designers see North Koreans as diabolical enemies, South Korean game censors say they see North Koreans as wayward cousins. Unhappy that North Koreans are replacing Nazis and cold war Soviets as all-purpose bad guys in electronic battle games, the Korea Media Rating Board, appointed by the president of South Korea, is putting out the word to foreign game makers: check with us before you pay for a translation.
So far, South Korea’s official game censors have blocked the sale here of three games involving fiendish North Koreans: Ghost Recon 2, Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory (both Ubisoft) and Mercenaries: Playgrounds of Destruction (LucasArts).
Well, you can’t let those games break the unification mood, especially when online games will bring the two Koreas together.
And this is a bit disconcerting:
Some Americans and South Koreans insist that Seoul is censoring movies and video games as a way to keep the peace with its balky, heavily armed neighbor. "In South Korea, we have been turned down by everybody - film, DVD, TV, you name it - no one will touch ‘Seoul Train,’ " said Jim Butterworth, a Coloradan who has filmed and co-produced a documentary on what he calls an "underground railroad" that tries to smuggle North Korean defectors out of China. "The South Korean government essentially banned the film. Some opposition congressman had it shown in the basement of the National Assembly."
"The Seoul Human Rights festival is the only one in the world that won’t show ‘Seoul Train,’ " he continued, adding that the movie had been shown at some 20 human-rights festivals around the world. North Korea’s official media - the only kind in the Communist-run North - has attacked the documentary as well as new video games that portray digital North Korean soldiers as enemies.
For a look at the changing depiction of those lovable lugs of the Korean People’s Army, take a look at this Kyunghyang Shinmun piece from June.
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S. Korea loves to boast about its “online penetration” (my, what a big cable you have) and how that puts them up with the “advanced” nations, but when it comes to content, when the country isn’t busy pulling the plug on Web sites (remember, Mr. Marmot?) it’s looking the other way on piracy:
“Korea leads the world in broadband penetration, and its citizens are among the most Internet-savvy in the world; yet its marketplace in every kind of copyrighted work is plagued by excessive levels of piracy, especially online, and much of its legal infrastructure is outmoded for a world of e-commerce in copyrighted materials.”
(From the International Intellectual Property Alliance 2005 report on S.K.)
Korea’s already got a bad rep for piracy, now it will get one for supressing free speech and legal commerce.
I’ve just been reading some accounts of north koreans, and for some reason its really shocked me. not that there was really anything that i haven’t heard before, but it really hit home for some reason. i am wondering what we can actually do other than just discuss this on an online blog that really has very little impact (no offence).
I was wondering if a boycott korea campaign with some stories from north korea, and south koreas reaction, or lack there of may be effective in drawing some more attention to korea, and perhaps hitting them where it hurts (the hip pocket). perhaps i’d be beter served asking this over at one free korea, but just thought i’d ask it here, and i’ll prob ask it there too.
In this vein, I expect a post on our ambassador mentioning the Norks as running the first state-sponsored counterfeiting operation since Hitler [cough, Marmot]. Bad ambassador, don’t you inderstand? It’s better to not anger our brothers up north. They’re not responsible for their actions, only we are.
I was at a party once and bullshat with a newly minted Secret Service agent for a while. He mentioned that as part of their training they were asked to identify flaws in a North Korean “super note” (i.e. $100). After long, intense scrutiny the whole class gave up. It turned out the Norks added one extra brick to Independence Hall so they could identify their own fakes.
In the 19th Century wars were started over less provocative state actions.
What I would really like to see happen is international condemnation of marking products made in Kaesong as “South Korean” when they are made with N. Korean labor in opaque circumstances with no international oversight. We know the N. Koreans are working for less money than their “brothers” in the South–that’s the whole point of setting up in Kaesong–but don’t know much about their working conditions or the financial arrangement that has them working there. It just looks like a giant sweatshop for S. Korean companies to profit from cheap N. Korean labor with no competition (companies from other countries haven’t been invited to set up there) and a non-transparent cash flow to Pyongyang. It should be brought up at the WTO.
“Korea’s already got a bad rep for piracy, now it will get one for suppressing free speech and legal commerce.”
Well, the censorship issue isn’t exactly new either. But when censorship meets piracy, what do you get? Mercenaries, Ghost Recon et altri sold in Yongsan in the very light-grey market…
you have to go and see this!
http://greenspacesg.blogspot.com/