Do Koreans enjoy Internet freedom?

By Nam Hyun-woo, Baek Byung-yeul and Park Ji-won

South Korea, one of the world's IT powerhouses, hosted the Seoul Conference on Cyberspace 2013 on Oct. 17-18.

President Park Geun-hye said in her speech on the first day of the conference that the country has built an IT industry within a short period, helped by the fastest Internet speeds in the world. She urged participants to step up cross-border cooperation in order to create a healthy cyberspace environment.

While the President is showing her will to promote the use of cyberspace, the government has been placing some restrictions on the Internet by blocking some services and forcing netizens to use specific means when paying bills for online transactions.

The National Intelligence Service is currently under investigation over alleged violations of Internet privacy, posting online views which could have influenced the voting of citizens during last year's presidential election.

Freedom House, based in Washington D.C., which describes itself as "an independent watchdog organization dedicated to the expansion of freedom around the world," released a report titled, "Freedom of the Net" on Oct. 3. This ranks South Korea as 20th among 60 countries in terms of Internet and media freedom after research was conducted between May 2012 and April 2013. The list places South Korea below Nigeria and Brazil. Iceland took the top spot, with a 6 obstacles to access, limits on content and violations of user rights, while South Korea acquired 32 negative points, resulting in a description of "Partly Free" on the areas of freedom studied.

The report says that political, social and/or religious content was blocked in Korea and pro-government commentators manipulated online discussions. The current chair of trustees at Freedom House is William H. Taft IV, who previously served as chief legal advisor to the State Department during the administration of George W. Bush.

Is this just another report to ignore, or a warning that citizens here must pay heed to so that we can understand the true extent, or rather lack of, Internet freedom?

Limitation in Data access

As a senior majoring in political science at a domestic university, Kim Hwan-yong, 26, often visits government websites as reference sources for his school papers. But he said that these websites offer little information of any worth.

"I don't even try to visit the official pages of government agencies when I need some figures for my school project. They are absolutely useless. The fastest and the surest way to obtain what I need is to find other sources using google," Kim said.

Kim said that government websites in Korea neither provide proper search engines for interested citizens, nor post information at the right time.

"When I begin a school project on current affairs, the first thing I used to do is browse related news stories through Google or Naver. Then, I go to related government web pages in order to obtain facts and figures, but as expected, they usually don't provide relevant documents," he continued.

Moreover, the web pages of government agencies are also poor at handling confidential information.

Rep. Jin Sung-joon of the main opposition Democratic Party (DP) raised suspicions about the security systems used by government agencies.

According to Rep. Jin, the internal message board of the Ministry of National Defense, which should only be accessible to those authorized, can be easily accessed by searching through Google.

"For example, just type in the search word, "key resolve" on Google. Anyone can then find the exact schedule of the joint Key Resolve military exercise between Korea and the United States," Jin stated on the record during a National Assembly inspection of government agencies on Oct. 14.

"Additionally, by searching on domestic search engines such as Daum and Naver, anyone can find the name of the radio-monitoring unit of the South Korean army that monitors North Korean communications because they post job advertisements for cleaners on a classified website."

While a few government agencies are apparently too careless to protect the information they are entrusted with, the number of attempted hackings into those web pages is estimated to be around 13,000 times during the first half of this year alone, Rep. Park Nam-chun of the DP said during an Assembly inspection on the same day.

The lawmaker added that if this trend continues, the total number of hacking attempts is expected to be over 20,000 at the end of the year.

Restricting Google Maps

Kim Hyo-sang, a 33-year-old Korean American businessman, is working at the New York branch of one of Korea's top 30 conglomerates.

Kim, who travels to Korea about once a month for business, complained about how his latest smartphone is rendered useless in Korea.

"When I am in New York, I don't think about the need to purchase car navigation because I can find anywhere I want to go with Google Maps," Kim said.

Google Maps is the most used map service in the world and has become an essential tool for travelers everywhere. Thanks to smartphones which have huge technological advances, Kim says he can find anywhere he wants to find except in Seoul.

"As it shows real-time information about accident and traffic jams on my mobile device, Google Maps helps me find the fastest way to any destination."

But, he cannot use Google Maps as his car navigation when he rents and drives in Seoul.

"The driving navigation just doesn't work in Korea. When I turn on the driving mode, it only mutters ‘can't use on here.' As I didn't expect this, I arrived late to my meeting by about an hour," Kim said.

The reason he can't use Google Maps is because the government here restricts use of it. Regulations against detailed information being widely available were put in place after the Korean War to prevent the authorities in Pyongyang gaining in-depth on-the-ground information. Although these restrictions are more than 60 years old, they still govern the use of current technology such as GPS systems. Such governance may be considered as a necessary evil.

Forcing Active X to users

"The government-led peculiar (Internet) certification system in Korea isolates the country's IT industry. In particular, an excessive use of Active X framework significantly hinders a convenient use of the internet."

These were remarks made by independent lawmaker Ahn Cheol-soo during last year's presidential election campaign, promising that he will stop the "monopoly" of Active X in Korea's Internet domain.

The software mogul-turned-politician's promise was somewhat technical and failed to attract much attention. But his pledge caused repercussions for some young people, fed up with the messages that constantly pop up when they are forced to use Active X framework when surfing the Internet.

"The government and local media outlets report that Korea is one of the most web-wired countries in the world and its Internet environment is the best in terms of penetration rate or access speeds. But, they always neglect that the country has poor Internet freedom. Forcible use of Active X is the most critical example for that," said Kim Dong-chan, an employee at an IT company in Seoul.

On most websites for financial transactions in Korean domain and other Korean government pages require users to authenticate themselves through Active X plug-ins. Most of them run only on the Internet Explorer web browser created by Microsoft, which also produced the Active X framework.

Many young people like Kim complain that such additional Active X plug-ins overloads their computers. What makes them more upset is that whenever they have to install such a plug-in, the page refreshes and all the information they typed on the page disappears.

"I'm not trying to say which web browser is better, but there really are some users who don't want to use Internet Explorer or Windows. When you try to make a payment online on Korean websites, using Internet Explorer is compulsory, otherwise you cannot use online banking," said Kim.

Many question why the government or financial websites require users to use services by only using Internet Explorer after installing a series of Active X plug-ins.

In August, more than 200 experts engaged in debate over the issue.

"The coercive government policy which forces users to authenticate themselves through Active X programs means the Korean cyber security industry lags behind on the international stage," said Prof. Kim Ki-chang at Korea University during the debate.

He pointed out that Korea's confinement to Active X is because of the government's policy and is not due to technical barriers.

"Since the government has required use of Active X authentication systems from the early stages of Korea's online banking more than 13 years ago, no banks and other companies dare to try stop using the Active X framework," he said.

Employee Kim, said that he does not regard Ahn as a future leader of this country, but that his election pledge was a convincing one.

"The government's IT policy should be more detailed and user-focused as Ahn suggested," he said.