SEOUL, South Korea — In June last year, APC received a request from JinboNet, our partner network in Korea, for support and solidarity for a 72 hour “website strike” in protest against the Korean government’s introduction, from July 1st, of a compulsory filtering system for “PC Bangs” (Cybercafes), schools and public libraries. The system blocked access to websites that the Korean government considers to be “harmful to minors.” Websites selected for blocking included mainstream lesbian and gay websites.
In 2002, censorship on the Internet by the Korean government still continues. Jinbonet, who joined APC as a member in November 2001, brought attention to the censorship during a sixty day relay hunger strike which ended on December 20th, 2001.
Then on January 9th, a press conference on the first lawsuit to be brought against the South Korean government’s Internet rating system led to a flurry of press coverage internationally.
The lawsuit was brought by an alliance of 15 human rights groups who cite the blocks on the website www.exzone.com (just one of the many sites aeffected by government imposed filtering) violate the South Korean constitution, which guarantees freedom of expression, speech and of the press. The alliance also claims the restrictions discriminate against homosexuals.
The Korean Information and Communications Ethics Committee (ICEC) is responsible for classifying content on the Internet. According to the South Korean Lesbian and Gay Alliance in a report in the Washington Post on January 10, the ICEC classifies homosexuality under the category of “obscenity and perversion” in its “Criteria for Indecent Internet Sites.” A supposedly independent body, it appears that the ICEC was influenced by legislation passed by the Korean government in 1997, classifying descriptions of “homosexual love” as “harmful to youth.”
The Internet content rating system is based on PICS (Platform for Internet Content Selection) technology.
2002-03-28
