The Marmot’s Hole

Benicio74

Columbine redux:

Let’s not look into or try to reform the parents and teachers lack of monitoring of the abnormal/disturbing behavior of children and the general “kids will be kids attitude” that allows them to devolve into predators.

Let’s blame the videos they were watching and the computer games they were playing.

Just a shifting of the blame.

Just like Columbine, the school/administrators have a great deal of responsibility for allowing things like this to continue for so long. Also, the parents- if they don’t know what their kids are up to, then they are not doing their jobs.

Blame online porn and try to stamp it out. It has been proven that in severely sexually restricited societies the instances of rape and sexual assault are both far more numerous and more severe.
http://www.hawaii.edu/PCSS/onl.....ovrvw.html

The damn parents were not paying attention to what their kids were doing nor involved enough in their non-studying lives to teach them right from wrong and the damn school administration didn’t put a stop to it nor try to properly punish/reform the offenders because they wanted to keep it quiet and pretend nothing was wrong.

And the scapegoating continues!!!

globalvillageidiot

“Anyway, maybe it’s another one of those official “crackdowns” where they make the motions of getting tough on something to appease part of the public, but really they don’t do much at all.”

You’re probably right. I hope.

SomeguyinKorea

Well, that’s just BS. Adult watching online porn are not harming kids.

Granfalloon

I agree with comments #5, and possibly #6 (”I hope”? For what?). It’s a shame how certain problems aren’t addressed until they are shockingly obvious (by which point much damage has been done). I was hoping that this recent incident might lead to sex education in the schools, but I guess not. Much easier to blame teh internets.

mcnut

the whole irony of this is school age kids walk right past red light districts and massage palors everyday without any concern by parents or citizens

jdog2050

Wow, robert using emule and bangbros? That hard republican exterior is crumbling?

Well, from the reports that I’ve seen, Korea’s internet usage is pretty much anarchy. As post #1 said, good luck with that shit.

gordsellar

Once again, Korea fails to learn from the past experience of other societies who’ve made the same mistake. Crackdowns achieve nothing, and in fact, only spur young people — who tend to be more ahead of the curve than legislators and law enforcement in the department of unintended uses of technology — to find methods of circumventing the restrictions.

If I thought the government was serious about this, I would be pointing out how inventive people become in finding back doors and ways around technological blockages. (Hell, start up Synaptic Package Manager and install… wait, I won’t mention it in case some MIC flack is reading this.)

Essentially, blocking (mainstream) porn online will present kids not with the impossibility of accessing it, but with greater challenge. A few will figure it out, and the solution will spread like wildfire, and then the tin pot will cool, and it’ll be back to the same-old.

But as the link to my own post suggests, the wider tendency towards internet controls and censorship is worrying. Censorship and Internet filtration is nothing new in Korea, mind you. From the recent Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering, the ROK’s profile is available online:

Although South Korea is the world leader in Internet penetration and broadband penetration, its citizens do not have access to a free and unfiltered Internet. The state imposes a substantial level of filtering for a free and democratic society. It requires ISPs to block sites on government lists and fosters a culture of self-censorship through broadly worded laws that make individuals criminally liable for posting “antistate” content. The state also requires that Korean Web sites engage in a self-rating system, and that ISPs and other Internet access facilities, such as cybercafés and schools, self-police for content deemed harmful to youths. Despite reports that the South Korean government has considered discontinuing its filtering of pro–North Korean Web sites,45 ONI’s testing indicated that the government still filters a large amount of content related to North Korea, as well as a handful of Web sites devoted to gambling and pirated software.

There was no mention of the blog ban or the Kim Sun Il blockage, which counts probably as both political and social filtration, and I’m sure there are other cases of which I’m not aware.

Still, an increase in censorship is not the way to go. As with the arguments over American beef, the real solution would be open, honest discussion and cultivation of dialog… “citizen deliberation,” as Lawrence Lessig describes it in terms of a free society. Instead of cultivating a free society where debate can occur, censorship and filtration strangles it at the roots. All of Korea’s modern governments deserve criticism in this regard, but Lee’s especially seems to be embracing censorship with a vigor unseen for years… which rankles because it’s commonly couched in terms of maturity — “We’re not ready for internet freedom” and ignores the messiness of how societies work out their freedom.

By this logic, car chase scenes should be cut from all movies before going to cinema, in order to discourage reckless driving. How sadly obvious the real causes are, and how pathetic they aren’t addressed.

But you know, Korean politics needs its crackdowns. Low productivity in the workplace, low productivity in the government: the necessary trick for getting away with it is to look like you’re doing something.

Which is less depressing than believing that the whole legislative branch is actually this wrongheaded and inept. Maybe not more realistic, but less depressing.

Mr Kim

He’ll get some strange - pixelated - ideas about genitalia, though.

roboseyo

Mr Kim: lol

mental image of all those poor kids whose parents never talked to them about sex, in their first DVD room/love motel/wherever experience, or (according to Baduk) on their wedding nights, thinking “hey! where are all the little squares?”

David tz

gee, if the net-police put even half as much effort into this, as normal police do towards catching taxi drivers running red lights, scooter rats driving on sidewalks, or as mentioned before- the crackdown on prostitution– we have absolutely nothing to worry about.

Parents actually taking some responsibility and monitoring what they’re kids are looking at on-line? That would mean they would have to come home and spend some quality time with their families. No more late nights with their co-workers at the room salon I guess.