Concerns Mount Over Internet Witch Hunt
By Kim Tong-hyung
Staff Reporter
So, they shot the messenger. Too bad they couldn’t do the same to the guy who updates the stock market numbers, which continue to sink like a lead balloon.
The Seoul Central Prosecutors’ Office has sought an arrest warrant for a 30-year-old man identified as Park, who confessed of being the real person behind famed Internet pundit, ``Minerva,’’ on charges of spreading ``groundless’’ allegations about the country’s ailing economy.
Law enforcement officers are eager to punish Park, who they’ve searched for months, claiming that he deliberately created confusion in financial markets by distorting facts.
However, critics argue that Park’s detainment is the latest example of the government’s inability to handle online criticism properly, with authorities going overboard in efforts to abate the rabble in cyberspace.
``It’s difficult to tell whether we are living in a police state or democracy, as Internet users have been put under a gag order,’’ said Jin Jung-kwon, Chungang University professor and popular political columnist.
The Lee Myung-bak government was kicked in the teeth by bloggers right out of the gate, first for its controversial decision to resume U.S. beef imports and more recently for ineptitude in economic policies, which caused Lee’s approval ratings to fall.
As a result, beleaguered government officials have been seeking new ways to monitor the Internet, and now South Korea is about to become one of the first democracies in the world to impose rules on Internet users by law.
The Korea Communications Commission (KCC), the country’s broadcasting and telecommunications regulator, is looking to rewrite media law to have Internet sites face the same restrictions as news organizations, making them subject to libel suits and such.
The KCC also moved to limit online anonymity, requiring Internet users to register their real names or verifiable nicknames to post comments on sites.
Regulators were also given the power to suspend the publication of articles accused of being fraudulent or slanderous for a minimum of 30 days during arbitration.
Minerva got a taste of the new rules when Daum was forced to suspend a Dec. 29th article claiming that the government is forcing banks to stop buying U.S. dollars just three hours after he posted it.
In an earlier interview with The Korea Times, Jimmy Wales, the founder of online encyclopedia Wikipedia, ridiculed the legislative efforts by the Korean government as ``overkill.’’
``This is certainly a dangerous path to go down,'' he said.
``The governments that are given the power to block things usually tend to block things, including information that originally wasn't intended to be blocked from access,’’ he continued, adding, ``The most important solution to this kinds of bad behavior on the Internet may rest on the design of community spaces, whether the community has the ability to control what's going on. At Wikipedia, the community quickly identifies and blocks the people that misbehave and delete their negative contributions.’’
Minerva had garnered massive readership since last September, when he predicted the collapse of Lehman Brothers on an online bulletin board operated by Daum (www.daum.net) just five days before the investment bank went belly up.
The legend grew after the blogger accurately anticipated the sharp depreciation of the Korean won and the local stock market crash, and his 200 postings so far have gathered over 40 million hits.
Government officials had been attempting to uncover Minerva’s identity despite accusations of authoritarianism and apparently waited for the smallest excuse to snatch him away from the keyboard.
Minerva made a mistake on his Dec. 29 article when he wrote that the government had sent letters to banks and exporters to stop buying dollars to prop up the local currency, a claim that was immediately denied by the Ministry of Strategy and Finance.
The posting is now suggested as key evidence by investigators trying to prosecute Park on charges of spreading false information.
It bears further watching whether their case would stand in court, when most of Park’s articles were basically analysis of publicly available data.
And, in intervening in the foreign currency market, policymakers admitted to talking with bank executives, seeking ``cooperation’’ over discouraging the stockpiling of dollars, adding that documents were never dispatched. So, to put it bluntly, Park’s prosecution hangs on the existence of paperwork.