By Kim Tong-hyung
Staff reporter
The Lee Myung-bak government has attempted to impose rules on Internet users, but it is now facing increasing resistance from websites, which claim that the efforts to purge online behavior have gone over-the-top.
The latest conflict erupted after the Korea Internet Self-Governance Organization (KISO) rejected demands by the police and censorship authorities to delete a slew of blog posts claiming a conspiracy in the government investigations of North Korea's apparent attack on the South Korean warship Cheonan, which left 46 sailors dead in March.
KISO, which represents six major Internet companies including NHN, Daum, SK Communications and Yahoo! Korea, said that requests by the National Police Agency (NPA) and the Korean Communications Standards Commission (KOCSC) lacked reasonable legal grounds.
The police had pressed the websites to delete 16 online writings related to the Cheonan attack, most of them raising suspicions over North Korean involvement, while KOCSC also wanted them to pull a blog post titled ``Cheonan was sunk by an American submarine.''
A KISO official stressed that websites had to respect the rights of the bloggers to express their opinions, however ludicrous they were, and there was little reason to think that the writers were deliberately trying to harm public interest with their unfounded theories.
``It was uncertain whether the demand by the KOCSC represented an administrative action or rather a `recommendation,''' said a KISO official.
``If it was an administrative action, the writers of the blog posts could defend their rights through administrative lawsuits. But if the websites were to delete the writings by just recommendation, that suppresses freedom of expression as the authors will be deprived of a legal countermove.''
The government has been considering more ways to monitor the web, with measures including limiting online anonymity, regulating websites under the same rules as traditional media, thus making them subject to the laws of libel and so forth, and also granting censorship authorities a bigger hammer.
Although critics say the moves threaten to suppress legitimate online speech, policymakers claim that the new rules are necessary to curb cyber bullying.
After experiencing a growing list of deleted articles and photos, which had online users flocking to foreign Internet services such as Google, the Korean Internet companies responded by forming KISO last year to show a collective backbone.
Last year, KISO declared that its member websites, including the country's three-largest web ``portals'' Naver, Daum and Nate, will no longer accept demands from government organizations to delete comments on message boards. Government employees could still ask the websites to suspend articles they claim as misleading or defamatory, but will have to prove that the content was based on false facts, it said.
Now, in resisting censorship and law enforcement officials, the websites appear to be taking their fight further.
