UPDATE: After months of not being accessible by KT, and this having worsened over the last two weeks, readers are reporting being able to suddenly get back in from the day this post went up. Something must have worked!
To those of you this may concern, no, Scribblings of the Metropolitician is not offline, but rather has been placed on the banned list by the Ministry of Communications.
Yay! Well, I would be honored to have garnered so much attention, but in actuality, ALL SixApart and blogs.com sites are blocked. In a stroke of sheer genius, KT (which receives government money), in an apparent attempt to block korea (dot) blogs (dot) com (have fun with your proxy there), has simply blocked ALL sites from that blog’s hosting company – my hosting company.
As far as I know, Hanaro Communications (my home service provider) is still working, but it looks like the revised list is getting entered into more ISP’s and is spreading. I can’t get on from work anymore, and we haven’t changed ISP’s as far as I know, and I’d always been able to get onto my blog.
Or perhaps I’ve pissed off someone in the MoC, since korea (dot) blogs (dot) com doesn’t seem to have been active since 2003. The other service providers seem to have just blocked the offending sites. Why does KT have to take the shotgun approach?
I’m on the phone with them, and they’re allegedly contacting the MoC, but I feel like I’m getting the runaround. Any assistance from you all would be great. Anyone who cares – and/or also uses blogs.com for their site – can and should call the office and look more deeply into the situation at 02) 3674-5753 and see if there is anything else that can be done.
You can help me out while also sending the message that willy-nilly blocking entire sections of the Internet for a single blog isn’t smart. And if this IS some excuse for blocking my site because of the content being uncomfortable (but not illegal), this doesn’t bode well for other foreign bloggers, either.
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31 Comments
Oh God. You should’ve put a warning there that korea.blogs.com aint work/kid safe…
You thinking this is Rho Muhyeon’s Marc Rich moment?
This is why a bought my own web space.
#1 Well, it IS being blocked for a reason, ya know. Hehe. Of course it’s NSFW! ㅋㅋㅋ
#3 Me, too, actually. Blogs.com is pretty expensive – I pay $120+ a year. I’m grandfathered in, but I do also like the fact that all web pages are written to real, static HTML pages, which makes it very Google-friendly.
But, I’ve got my own URL, and paid server, but there’s nothing that might stop them from blocking say, Wordpress.com or even rjkoehler.com. Just up to the whim of whomever decides your blog is “undesirable.” In fact, one would think that blogging through something like Blogger.com or the big ones would be safer, since they’re not going to block ALL of the sites on that service, right? Right? Hehe.
It’d be like blocking YouTube – if YouTube had been available for the Kim Sun-il incident, I’m sure no individual sites would have carried it and it would have just blocked YouTube. They did the same to all foreign blogs (they didn’t know what a “blog” was back then), and probably would have done it for YouTube had it existed back then, as well, come to think of it (no UCC back then, either).
Of course, after the Pachabel Canon guitar boy gave a new boost to Korea’s pride, things might have been different.
In any case, nothing’s really to stop the MiC from blocking whomever – I just think KT didn’t think much about what they were doing and shut off access to hundreds of thousands of blogs served by SixApart. And that’s wack.
Grrrrr.
Is your foot fetishism site blocked too?
I find it strange that korea.blogs.com works in Korea. There is nudity which clearly goes against Korean pornography laws. Wasn’t it the MoC’s intention to block all foreign porn sites? (insert big laughter here).
Do you really think the MoC singled out YOUR site? I mean seriously dude. What have you said that any number of other sites have not? Also, why don’t you just migrate your site to a colo that supports the blog software you use?
Anyway, i think its harsh that Korea blocks sites anyway. Pure shit.
Its insane that MoC tries to ban blogs. Its like living in Burma. Whether you love or hate Korea or are somewhere in the middle, its not good policy. Although, this is the same country that tried to ban online political discussion prior to an election. Lets hope that 2MB sweeps these people and the old ways out. Korea deserves better.
I forgot to add, I work for a government agency, and your site works fine from work. I’ll have to call them and have that corrected.
#5 - FMS? Well, although it hasn’t been that (an experiment in fetish and the gaze) since about 2 months after it started (making that about 1.5 years now), no - it’s not blocked. It’s not a blogs.com site.
#6 Yeah, I agree. As for korea.blogs.com - it shouldn’t work - it should bring up a warning from KISCOM. My site is simply not working. And given that mistranslations and summaries of my blog posts show up on Naver not so infrequently, I could pretty easily see someone complaining, especially after Cho Seung Hee and the thrashing the Korean press gave the site when it totally mistranslated parts of my blogs and all but called my site “anti-Korean.” Regardless of whether it is, it’s not doing anything illegal, at least that would involve criminal law (not civil suits) that should make the ministry block it. If my site were part of a defamation suit, and there was an injunction against the site, I’m sure I’d know about it.
Anyway, I simply don’t know, as I said, what the deal is. But I do know it’s blocked, and the block seems to be spreading, and I am very not pleased.
Regardless of what anyone thinks of the site, I put a lot of hard work into it, and I am understandably pretty irritated to get constant emails asking “Did you stop blogging?” and “Where’s your site?”
Again, grrr.
#8 OK. Feel free. Still, the problem and my complaint wasn’t with which gov agencies and places that it worked at, but the fact that it doesn’t work with KT, which received govt. money and is more zealous about adhering to MoC bans. That’s exactly what the KT guy told me when I asked why my site worked with other ISP’s. It’s very possible your agency simply has another ISP.
So, whatever floats your boat, man.
Hmmm, China Reloaded?
Yes, but Typepad is still a hosted service, which means your site stands a good chance of getting blocked whenever the MIC/KT/등등 decides to do the lazy thing and react to a particular website by blocking all the sites from that particular service. Hey, I loved Typepad when I used it, but I learned after the first time the MIC did this to buy my own space. That way, if my site is being blocked by the MIC (which it never has been, knock on wood), at least I know they’re going after my site and not some other guy’s.
Besides, I know Typepad was blocked in China. Not sure if it still is.
Anyway, good luck trying to deal with MIC on this. I do feel for you — had they done this to a Korean service like Egloos or Tistory, they’d have tons of users bitching up a storm. MIC will probably free up your site in a couple of days, but they really shouldn’t be handling things like this — you pay good money for your site.
If it being block why is there not a notice just like the one for that little North Korean news website?
Have you done a tracert?
As a matter of fact I just go onto the Metropolitician’s blog and I have KT.
I would really check to see if it is the server company hosting the blog is blocking a certain range of IPs. If enough of the script kiddies get their little clones to bang a certain IP (URL) a server company will block a range of the offending IPs.
Your site is now working from my office.
As you’re not citizens I’m assuming you get no protection from the law, but what about Korean nationals who receive similar treatment? Doesn’t Article 21 of the Korean Constitution protect them?
Article 21 [Speech, Press, Assembly, Association, Honor, Public Morals]
(1) All citizens enjoy the freedom of speech and the press, and of assembly and association.
(2) Licensing or censorship of speech and the press, and licensing of assembly and association may not be recognized.
(3) The standard of news service and broadcast facilities and matters necessary to ensure the functions of newspapers is determined by law.
(4) Neither speech nor the press may violate the honor or rights of other persons nor undermine public morals or social ethics. Should speech or the press violate the honor or rights of other persons, claims may be made for the damage resulting therefrom.
Your site is working from my home (KT) now too.
Does anyone know how to check where a site is being blocked from?
My father’s site is not accessible from either home or work and I’d like to know if it’s being blocked by KT. (Site is about Peggy’s Cove, Nova Scotia, so no reason to block that…unless someone REALLY doesn’t like Peggy’s Cove!)
It was blocked this morning, but comes in fine now. Looks like the squeaky wheel got the oil.
Hmmm…Someone must have done something. I’m on KT and couldn’t get Mike’s blog, but I just checked and there’s no problem.
Scribblings of the Metropolitician comes up fine for me, in Seoul.
Peggy’s Cove knows what it did wrong and must apologize to the Korean nation. Perhaps the map on the wall of the geography teacher at Peggy’s Cove middle school depicts that body of water between Korea and Japan as the “Sea of Japan”?
There is an easy way to get around that. Just click on the link below. This will take you to a search of CGI proxy’s listed on google. Just click on any link till you find a working one (some links might be dead) and then type in the URL of the site that is blocked. The proxy’s enable you to bypass the firewall settings your ISP has set up. It’s also helpful for all those asian porn sites that korea blocked as well.
http://www.google.com/search?q.....xy.cgi%22+ 22Start+browsing+through+this+CGI-based+proxy%22&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&filter=0
If the link doesn’t work here just go to google.com and type in - inurl:”nph-proxy.cgi” “Start browsing through this CGI-based proxy”
It must’ve been your participation in the YouTube Korea launch or the “youtube fighting” exclamations by those you filmed.
Thankfully plenty of pr0n still available. Change the domain name to PeggysBukkakeCove.com and it’ll be accessible lickity split.
Hmm! Interesting. Something must have helped this move along – I didn’t feel like it was the additional phone call I had today…perhaps one or a few calls were made? Perhaps they got wind of this post? Perhaps they just solved the problem finally today? A big coincidence, methinks, or somehow, some way, this post may have actually done something. Who knows?
If no one’s having any problems anymore, then kudos for KT customer service!
the blog gods, ironically, became tired of your tedium. and voila! back comes your blog.
I was kind of assuming that it was one of those wacky pro-NORK sites that claim that Kim Jong-Il killed a hundred Japanese soldiers in Manchuria (when he was just a baby) by swinging his pecker at them… Stuff like that. But noo… Instead of hilarity, we get smut. Dirty, dirty, wjk-style smut.
No problems accessing it from my home(Powercomm).
I can’t belive you just tried to suggest the Korean govt. was attempting to block your site because it was down for a day.
You got my hopes up.
#27, Exactly wrong. If that blog is down, he posts here.
#27 - Actually, it’s been down at KT for months now, although some recent update from the MoC was causing it to get far worse since about 2 weeks ago. And I didn’t “try to suggest” anything, and in fact stated from the beginning that my main theory was that it had just been blocked in a swathe of blogs.com sites. And yes, blogs have been blocked by the Korean government before, and given the trouble I’ve had with some readers, the thought crossed my mind. So? Does that give me a martyr complex in your eyes? Whatever.
And if you read around the expat blogosphere and here, you’d see that people have been asking about it. Given that I am a guest blogger here and my own blog was down for MONTHS until, coincidentally the very day I posted here, it seems that in fact, posting might have been a good idea.
And since, whether you like it or not, I do have readers to whom I’d like to get information out to, and many of them are also Marmot readers, I felt like this was a reasonable and effective way to do so.
If you don’t read or like my blog, then fine. Move on. As for #28, I don’t post here anymore, since my posts aren’t wanted here. If you were an observant reader, you’d know my last post was months ago. “If that blog is down, he posts here.” Nope - just factually untrue. In fact, I generally only posted SeoulGlow eps, generally, and don’t waste Marmot readers’ time about my blog issues.
I respect this blog’s readers, and even the fact that my posts aren’t welcome here. So I don’t, in general, post. However, since it was a good way to reach a lot of my readers, I sent out an update. So sue me. Or don’t come to my blog. In the end, it doesn’t matter to me.
But don’t act like I’m running ramshod over the Marmot’s community by making vanity posts and other stuff in the face of what people here want to see. You can count the number of total posts I’ve made here on one hand, and most of those were made before mid-2007. Just to set the record straight.
I always appreciate your posts wherever I find them and just assumed you were busy if you have not been posting here lately. I have never had a problem accessing any websites here in Japan.
Reminds me of Singapore. Here you can access all those hard-core websites but playboy.com is banned. Pure comedy.