By Cho Jae-hyon
City Editor
Kim Je-dong, a popular TV personality, has been accused of having violated the election law by posting messages encouraging his Twitter followers to cast ballots in the Seoul mayoral election on Oct. 26.
The prosecution says it is looking into the case upon a citizen’s complaint against Kim. The accusation is based on the guidelines set by the National Election Commission (NEC), which ban “those who the public know would vote for” from posting messages encouraging voters to go to the polls on the day of election.
The logic goes something like this: Kim is a well-known liberal comedian, his messages encouraging people to exercise their voting rights are tantamount to campaigning for a liberal candidate, and thus he violated the election law.
However, it’s silly to believe that voters would be swayed by an entertainer’s exhortation. They just know who to vote for regardless of what Kim says on Twitter.
Prosecutors should know better than indicting Kim on charges of breaching the election law. The prosecution has been the target of a torrent of online mockery for days following the launch of their investigation of the entertainer. Any attempt to punish him for encouraging voting would create a huge public backlash. It would be nonsensical to see him punished for doing what the NEC was supposed to do. Still, they won’t drop the case for a while.
Prosecutors could have simply ignored the complaint by the citizen. But they didn’t. With the launch of an investigation, they sent the message that questionable contents on Twitter could spell trouble for the author of such.
Anxious to put a tighter leash on social networking services (SNS), they are apparently using it as leverage to gag and control Twitter and other networking sites. Not only the prosecution but other state censors are joining forces to tighten monitoring.
But it’s a mission impossible to scrutinize the whole blogosphere. Censors mainly target some well-known anti-government micro bloggers as they cannot monitor all SNS users. Then it raises the question of fairness.
All in all, any move to control SNS is doomed to fail. In principle, SNS should be viewed as a private space where friends and followers chat and exchange information and opinions on whatever issues.
The government doesn’t have to bother to take a peek into what is basically private space. Rather, it needs to refrain from admonishing its employees for expressing their opinions on certain issues on online networking sites.
Some senior judges raised their boss’s eyebrows recently with blatant online comments critical of President Lee Myung-bak and his push for the Korea-U.S. free trade agreement (KORUS FTA). Conservative daily Chosun Ilbo was quick to report the judges’ “misdemeanor” and succeeded in inducing a rebuke from Chief Justice Yang Sung-tae.
Judges, as civic servants, are supposed to remain politically neutral under Korean laws. Yang urged them to be extra careful with their postings on SNS.
But his warnings were unheeded. The judges kept writing more scathingly critical messages even after the slap on their wrists. Their revolt underlined how hard it is to put SNS under control.
All the attempts to tame SNS users come ahead of the general and presidential elections next year. With numerous investigations and defamation suits, the authorities seek to intimidate tweeters and Facebook users into silence.
But SNS users won’t chicken out of posting what they want to say and what they think is right. The key to better coping with unruly SNS users is just to let them play as much as they want at their cyber playground. The more SNS content is censored, the uglier the eyes of censors become.
The Lee administration and Grand National Party are drowning fast. The relentless, humiliating fall looks unstoppable, with a number of members already scrambling to escape from the sinking ship.
Whenever conflicts surfaced involving sensitive issues involving the imports of American beef or the free trade agreement with the United States, President Lee has not made sufficient efforts to communicate with opposing groups but opted instead to suppress them with force.
It’s important to check any unlawful or destabilizing acts both online and offline. However, law enforcement authorities have put too much emphasis on restricting basic human rights guaranteed by the Constitution.
The ruling party lost the October Seoul mayoral election not because of SNS but because of the current administration’s inability to address social and economic problems that make people increasingly miserable.
Picking a fight with some influential tweeters or popular podcast operators will just add to their fame. Ignoring them is a smarter way than trying to censor them.
Let them enjoy the freedom of expression as much as they want. And then focus resources on tackling the root cause of a falling approval rate.