Korean Progressive Network 'Jinbonet'

Only by this kind of public support was Novartis able to recollect all invested capital within eight months of global marketing of Gleevec. But now, Novartis has twenty years of intellectual property rights.

On July 9th, the Suwon District Court made preliminary decision against Soribada (http://www.soribada.com), a Peer to Peer (P2P) program for MP3 file sharing, should be suspended. This is the first judgement regarding this type of case since the Korean recording industry accused the Soribada managers of infringement of copyrights last January and the prosecution indicted them last August. Though the final decision for the prosecution indictment has not been decided, we are seriously worried about this judgement.

On June 27, the South Korean consitutional court ruled that Article 53 of the Electronic Communication Business law, as well as Article 16 of an enforcement ordinance ot the law, otherwise knows as “regulation of dangerous communication,” were unconstitutional for violating freedom of expression.

On May 3rd, prosecutors charged Jeon Ji-Yoon, a Sungkonhoe University student and a member of “Dahamkke,” the Democratic Labor Party’s student committee, for violation of the National Security Law (NSL). According to prosecutors, this violation stemmed from statements made by Jeon on an internet bulletin board. Jeon has been in prison since May 7th.

On May 31st, “Dopehead” and “Bungbung,” managers of the Anti-Military Service Movement website (http://www.non-serviam.org) received an email from the Information & Communication Ethics Committee (ICEC), alerting them that their website was to be shut down for two months.

30 years have passed since the Korean government forced its people to seal all of their fingers on a piece of a card. This usage started in 1968, during the late President Park’s dictatorial regime, when Kim Shin-jo and his armed troops from North Korea infiltrated near the Blue House. It is time, however, such usage be eradicated.

On May 24th, the Korean Progressive Network (Jinbonet), the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions(KCTU), the Electricity Workers Union, and the Korean Federation of Transportation, Public, & Social Service Workers’ Union prosecuted the power companies because the felt that the companies’ conduct constituted an unfair action which the labor law bans.

Because the rank-and-file was scattered, it was very important to communicate with each other and headquarters. There were websites, cell phones, and many video activists to report their struggle.

The MIC will thoroughly search for violent and obscene contents in major portal sites along with any kind of unsound information roaming in cyber space and work on settling the rating system.

Searching for a lost child by using the fingerprints is gaining popularity for its cutting edge idea, reported The Naeway Economic Daily on February 15.

Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) have built database for identifying faces and fingerprints to rear up information security industry.

According to the Electronic Times on March 4th, the US government is now trying to legalize a passport that has biological information to prevent counterfeit passport after the 9-11 terrorist attack, and Korea is also planing to drive such project.

The proposed revision of the copyright law, which is now being discussed in the National Assembly, seriously violates the Constitution by using copyright to protect investments rather than the public good. Moreover, it also aggravates the already precarious situation of “digital libraries” by prohibiting access from outside the library. We strongly insist that the revision should not be passed because it will tremendously damage the public interest.

April 22 is the Day of Information Communication in South Korea. We should prosecute government censorship because this system represses people’s internet rights and freedom of speech.

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.

On Feb. 5th, nineteen civic, social and human rights organizations in South Korea hold a press conference in front of the U.S. embassy protesting against the US-VISIT and criticized that it was an apparent violation of human right.

Under the slogan, “No to the Internet Contents Rating System! We demand the resignation of the Secretary of the Ministry of Information & Communication,” a coalition of activists, students, teachers, journalists, artists, and union leaders staged a sixty-day hunger strike that ended on December 20th.

In July 2000, the Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) of Korea pronounced an act called ‘Communication Order Act’, which has introduced the PICS(Platform for Internet Content Selection) under the broad framework of Internet Content Rating System. This act manifestly shows the government’s intent to control the world of WWW: the authorities concerned does not try to make the on-line world the more creative and critical space but they are attempting to tame the netizens in terms of their own rules and perspectives.

Upon the continuous hunger strike for establishing democracy and human rights in the information society, By abolishing the Internet Content Rating System, and Demanding the resignation of the Minister of Information and communication.

We from Bangladesh, Cambodia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mongolia, Nepal, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Australia, Sweden, the U.K., the United States and Korea participanted the Asia Internet Rights Conference on November 8-10, and discussed the issues and the challenges of promoting and protecting internet rights in our respective countries. We hereby believe the importance of the internet rights for Asia people and the capacity of Asian people’s solidarity, despite the diversity of experiences shared by each participant.