John Rodgers
Controlling Chaos? The
Struggle with New Media in
South Korea
John Rodgers
“It’s ordered chaos,” my father said as we stepped out of a Seoul
City bus following a frenetic ride through the metropolis of 10 million
people, among throngs of commuter cars, taxis, trucks, other buses,
motorcycles and scooters (which slice between the larger vehicles),
military vehicles and police cars. The city buses are notorious for their
part in and negotiation of the chaos, cutting across lanes to reach a
screeching halt at a sidewalk stop where passengers (most knowing—to
the second—when the bus would arrive due to a phone application that
tracks the buses) hurry on before the driver darts back into traffic. If one
were to look at those drivers, passengers, sidewalk pedestrians, there is a
great likelihood that they’d either be on, staring into or holding a phone,
a phone that serves as a perpetual connection to another chaos (perhaps
less ordered), a chaos that poses a threat to the stability of a nation which
already stands on a peninsula divided by war only 60 years gone, and
halted with an armistice, its foe in the North a persistent threat developing
nuclear weapons, launching attacks at sea, and most recently, in 2010,
shelling an island off the west coast. Imagining chaos is not hard to do in
Korea—all one has to do is look at recent history or recall a rush-hour ride
through the city’s clamoring corridors.
Yet the more you live amongst this chaos the less you worry about
it. In March and April of 2013, following an unprecedented set of North
Korea actions—a third nuclear test, withdrawal from the 1953 armistice
agreement, the closing of the Kaesong Industrial Complex (an interKorean endeavor), among others—little distress existed among the people
of South Korea.1 As Russian scholar of Asia and specialist in Korean studies
1. http://www.voanews.com/content/south-korea-to-suspend-operations-at-kaesong-joint-industrialzone/1636786.html
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Andrei Lankov wrote at the time, “The average South Korean’s calm
indifference is understandable: he or she has been through similar ‘crises’
many times” (2013). Here one might plug in chaos for crises, surrounded
with the same sarcastic quotes. So while the populous carried on with
business as usual, the government scrambled to assess the threat level.
President-elect at that time, Park Geun-hye stated: “The North’s nuclear
test poses a significant threat to the Korean Peninsula and also international
peace and impedes trust-building between South and North Korea…In
no case will the new administration tolerate North Korea’s nuclear arms”;
later the government issued a statement declaring the test an “unacceptable
threat” (Lee, E.J., 2013). The state’s responsibility to protect its people
could be no clearer. Indeed, a threat could lead to a crisis and, ultimately,
chaos, here in the case of war.
But other potential threats loom, and the state would be negligent
to ignore them. I refer back to all those ubiquitous phones now, to
the inter- and hyper-connected people of South Korea, a population,
according to the CIA World Factbook, of 48,955,203 (July 2013 est.)
with 53.1 million mobile subscriptions at the end of 2011 (NewMedia
TrendWatch, 2013). More phones than people—some students I taught
had two phones, one for the teacher to confiscate and the other to use
surreptitiously. There are a reported 40,329,660 Internet users as of 2012
(10,012,400 on Facebook).2 In addition, 35 million people use the Korean
social networking and microblogging sites Cyworld and Nate (Yoon,
2011). And as Table 1 shows, smartphone penetration is rapidly increasing.
Table 1. Smartphone penetration and addiction. (WSJ Live 2013).
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Estimates project that by the end of 2013, 90 percent of South
Korean mobile subscriptions will be for smartphones; for perspective, it’s
estimated that 48.5 percent of U.S. subscriptions will be. Nevertheless,
it’s important to understand that nonsmartphone mobile users can still
access the Internet, just on a less user-friendly interface.
South Korea’s rapid adoption and development of technology puts
it in a future technological territory replete with lessons to be learned
by the rest of the planet. I recall the Bill Gates quote that Jack Lule
referenced: “Never before in history has innovation offered promise of so
much to so many in so short a time” (Lule, 2012, p. 60). That promise has
been fulfilled in South Korea, but now the implications of such innovation
are emerging as, in Brian McNair’s words, “consequences of chaos,”
consequences ongoing and unpredictable given the warp speed of modern
technological development (McNair asserts that, overall, the consequences
are positive) (McNair, 2006). Just as the South Korean government must
stay vigilant against North Korean threats, it also finds itself grappling
with the potential consequences of this new technological order where
an ever-more wired public spends an increasing part of its day in a virtual
public sphere, reading, watching, commenting, posting etc., creating
popular culture (as J. McGregor Wise put it), de- and reterritorializing,
constantly reimagining themselves, “meaning making,” and all the while,
potentially doing something that could threaten the economic and social
stability of the nation. This last point stands at the center of my thesis. As
we blast into this fifth stage of media, the Digital, (Oral, Script, Print and
Electronic coming before) it’s critical to exercise some caution. As Lule
wrote:
I do not see globalization or media proceeding—or advancing—
along an inevitable, inexorable path of progress. Media— and
globalization as well—have developed sporadically, erratically, in
fits and starts, driven by human needs, desires, and actions,
resulting in great benefits and sometimes greater harm.
(Lule, 2012, p. 38)
2. Internet World Stats 2012, Q2. http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats3.htm#asia
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the South Korean public, especially as they relate to New Media (blogs
and social networking sites (SNS)) and the South Korean government’s
application of old and new laws in response to those behaviors it has
deemed threatening and harmful, I intend to examine an attempt at
controlled chaos.
I return first to that ever-wired public sphere that I mentioned
above in order to reference McNair’s inclusion of a 2003 reassessment
by Eriksen and Weigard of Jurgen Habermas’s view of the contemporary
public sphere because it aptly describes the situation in which new media
operates, where “info anarchy” thrives, humming with misinformation,
factoids, lies et al.
Late-modern society is characterized by dominant discourses,
world views and forms of understanding which are put under
pressure [as] new, more unconstrained patterns of communication
emerge…and are in constant competition. The public sphere has
become anarchistic…it is vulnerable to perversions and
communication disturbances… it is a medium for unlimited
communication. (McNair, 2006, p. 14)
McNair claims that this anarchy can be both “creative” and
“destructive.” Surely it depends on who acts as the judge. As I develop my
thesis we will first look at the laws that existed in Korea long before the
appearance of the Internet—laws specifically related to North Korea and
Cold War elements—as well as newly created edicts. I will also provide
an overview of recent North Korean military provocations to accurately
represent the South’s realities. This will be followed by specific instances
of new media usage that drew the government’s attention and resulted in
legal action of varying degrees and outcomes.
Framework for Control
The National Security Law was formed and enacted during
a tumultuous time in Korean history following the 35-year Japanese
colonization of the peninsula, which ended at the conclusion of World
War II, and just two years before the Korean War. Having spent 30 years
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lobbying for Korean independence in China and America, Syngman
Rhee returned after World War II and campaigned for the unification and
independence of Korea (Syngman Rhee, 2013). He was elected president
in 1948, and enacted the National Security Law (NSL) the same year as
a means to repress the left-wing movement, a movement that had fought
more vigorously against Japanese Colonization and, post-Colonization,
sought peaceful reunification with the North, and abolishment of colonial
legacies while Rhee saw unification possible only by force; an anti-North
ideology formed the foundation of the conservative camp (Cho, 1997).
The NSL acted as a means to identify, apprehend, and punish,
sometimes by death, those seen as advocating for the North in any way.
Ironically, scholars agree that the NSL was modeled after Japan’s Security
Maintenance Law, which was used to squash the Korean liberation
movement during the 35-year colonization period (Cho, 1997). Rather
than outline the entire three-chapter, 24-article NSL, I will instead focus
on the areas that have been most applied and most criticized. First,
the NSL repeatedly refers to “Anti-State” groups which are defined as
“domestic or foreign organizations or groups whose intentions are to
conduct or assist infiltration of the Government or to cause national
disturbances” (Kraft, 2012). “National disturbances” is left open for
interpretation. The part of the NSL that has been most utilized over
the years is Article 7, which punishes those who “praise, encourage,
disseminate or cooperate” with an anti-state group; violators can receive
imprisonment of up to seven years (Kraft, 2012). Additionally—and this
strikes closer to the content of chaos—those who “create or spread false
information which may disturb national order” face a minimum prison
term of two years (Kraft, 2012). And as if to preclude any limitations
of the law, those who “create, import, duplicate, possess, transport,
disseminate, sell, or acquire documents, arts or other publications” that
violate Article 7 will be punished “according to the violation” (Kraft,
2012).
Unknowingly, President Rhee created a law that provides the
modern Korean government with the necessary rhetorical mechanism
(straight out of the Cold War) to exert some control in a world of New
Information and Communication Technologies (NICTs), information
anarchy, and inter(activity), as McNair called them.
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With the increasing role of technology in Korean life, the
government established a number of commissions to attempt to oversee
and control the transformation of society, the most recent coming in
2008 with the establishment of the Korea Communication Standards
Commission (KCSC). The message from KCSC Chairman Man Park on its
webpage is:
The Korea Communications Standards Commission was
established to safeguard the public nature and fairness of
broadcasting content, to promote a sound Internet culture, and to
create a safe online environment.
Broadcasting and the Internet communications services have
become indispensable necessities for people living in today’s ever
so fast changing information society. They are indeed deeply
ingrained in our day-to-day lives. Through careful examination of
their content, the Korea Communications Standards Commission
pledges to spearhead initiatives to deliver safe media that ensure
people with an enhanced quality of life.
(Korea Communications Standards Commission, 2013)
Among many other things, the KCSC enforces the Electronic
Communication Fundamental Law a dizzying collection of articles and
clauses outlining standards for electronic communication use. As it is
not necessary for me to go into great detail, I will only refer to Clause 1
under Article 47: “A person spreading a false rumor maliciously intending
to damage the public interest by using an electronic machine can be
imprisonment for under five years or given a fine of under 50,000,000
won ($50,000)” (Korea Communications Standards Commission, 2013).
Article 21 of the Korean Constitution (adopted on July 17, 1948,
and amended nine times subsequently) presents an interesting duality
regarding freedom of expression by first stating that, “all citizens shall
enjoy freedom of speech and the press,” then qualifying that, “neither
speech nor the press shall violate the honor or rights of other persons
nor undermine public morals or social ethics. Should speech or the
press violate the honor or rights of other persons, claims may be made
for the damage resulting therefrom” (Constitutional Court of Korea).
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Clearly there is room for censorship with these words depending on the
interpretation of honor, public morals and social ethics.
Thus the government has established a broad legal framework to
coerce and regulate threats and agents of chaos. Yet, as I will detail later,
the executive branch, led by the president, seems to have the final say in
actions taken against violators while the Prosecutor’s Office carries out the
indictment and litigation in courts where judges have increasingly, of late,
acquitted the accused.
North Korean Threats and Realities
Just before 9:30 p.m. on March 26, 2010, the Cheonan, a South
Korean naval corvette was split in half by an underwater explosion, and
quickly sank off the west coast of the Korean peninsula not far from the
Northern Limit Line (NLL) that separates the North and South—46
sailors died (Cha, 2010). Though various conspiracy theories circulated,
a joint investigative team determined that a North Korean torpedo had
scuttled the ship (JIG, 2010). Given the location and the history of
naval clashes between the two states since the Korean War, most of the
population suspected the North as soon as news emerged of the tragedy,
though the North denied involvement. Nonetheless, the Internet enabled
conspiracy theories to circulate far and wide, and fed a populous naturally
suspicious of its government’s hegemony, a government that was still
tinkering with democracy, a government that had erred more than once,
persecuting its own people during and after the war through a series of
military dictatorships (Lee, 2010).3 Among all of this was the reminder
that the country remained in a place of war, that the specter of military
conflict might never depart—the embers of the Korean War glowed within
the Korean social imaginary.4
Eight months later on November 23, those embers came afire
again when North Korean artillery shells bombarded Yeonpyeong Island,
also off the west coast of Korea in the Yellow Sea near the NLL, killing two
marines and injuring 21 citizens—this was the first bombing of South
3. Further elaboration will come below.
4. In Globalization & Media (2012), Jack Lule refers to Jacques Lacan’s emphasis of “the impact of society and
culture on people and their psyches” (pg. 53).
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Korean land since the Korean War (Kim, 2010). The North claimed that
South Korean military exercises in the region had prompted the attack.
Images of the smoking and smoldering island rapidly spread across all
media, and little room remained for denial. The North had attacked,
the South had returned fire, scrambled fighter jets, and consulted with
the U.S. over potential escalation. In an official statement at the time
President Lee said, “The North’s shelling of Yeonpyeong Island is an
undeniable provocation against South Korea…we will never tolerate the
North’s indiscriminate attack on civilians” (Ser, 2010).
The stakes could not have been higher. As one editorial put it:
The latest attack - the most aggressive since the 1950-1953
Korean War - underscores our vulnerability. If we cannot suppress
the erratic threats from North Korea, it will put not only the
region, but the entire world, at risk. Together with the
international community, we should respond with wisdom and
calm.
An armed conflict on the Korean Peninsula involves the United
States under the military alliance pact. The two countries must
mount a powerful defense. As North Korea’s patron, China will
inevitably have to get deeply involved, as it needs regional security
to sustain its economic growth and rising global hegemony.
(Kang, 2010)
The anti-North ideology with which President Rhee infused
the nation in 1948 found itself revivified along with the Cold War frame
through which it was created. Moreover, the internationalization of
the state takes form under “international community” and the need for
intermestic politics emerges (earlier the editorial states “North Korea’s
heavy artillery attack on the inhabited South Korean island of Yeonpyeong
is clearly an armed attack against a UN member”) whereby this is not just a
peninsular or even regional issue but one of global interconnectedness able
to disrupt the entire system (i.e. the Butterfly Effect5) if it were to escalate
into war (Pieterse, 2009; McNair, 2006).
No further military conflicts took place as the regional players—
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China, Russia, Japan, and the United States—maneuvered to calm tensions
and restore stability. Nevertheless, instability and uncertainty loomed
over the Korean peninsula reaffirming the need for vigilance within the
government and citizenry, especially state vigilance given its responsibility
to protect the people.
National Disturbances
From 2008 to 2011, South Korea experienced what one could
easily describe as national disturbances, under any definition of the phrase,
as 2010’s military clashes illustrate. In 2006 the U.S. and South Korean
governments began negotiations over a bilateral free trade agreement, and
10 months later, in April of 2007, signed the United States-Korea Free
Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA) (Choe, 2007). Things appeared to be
moving forward into early 2008 until Korea’s ruling conservative party,
led by President Lee Myung-bak, began a push for the ratification of the
agreement in the National Assembly, and news emerged about one specific
point of contention: the full resumption of U.S. beef imports, which had
been banned after an outbreak of mad cow disease (Creutzfeldt–Jakob
(vCJD) disease) in the United States in 2003 (Jung, 2008). Agents of
chaos swirled into action, especially those in new media, using the fear
trigger and hyper-adversarialism (a term coined by The Atlantic writer
James Fallows) (McNair, 2006). Rumors filled cyberspace and spilled
onto the streets—Koreans were genetically predisposed to mad cow
disease; consuming the meat could cause sudden death; the disease could
spread through soil, air, cosmetics, diapers, food; Korea would be labeled
an at-risk country and other nations would prohibit Koreans entry; U.S.
businesses in country were already using the contaminated beef (Farivar,
2011; Jung, 2008)6. Even at the prep school where I taught administrators
had to announce to students, parents and faculty that American beef was
5. Referenced by McNair and defined in Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary as “a property of chaotic systems (as the
atmosphere) by which small changes in initial conditions can lead to large-scale and unpredictable variation in
the future state of the system.”
6. For certain McNair would include this type of rumor-mongering as one of the challenges to “quality”—as
he wrote, “Of the millions of bloggers active at any given time, only a few hundred become credible….The
rest comprise a communicative Tower of babel, fleeting and insubstantial, perhaps mischievous, sometimes
dangerous” (pg. 205). Dangerous, absolutely, in this case.
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not being used in school meals.
The news spread like chaotic wildfire, and led to the social action
that McNair defined as the third stage of communicative multi-causality
(production and consumption coming first, respectively); though resultant
social action is unpredictable the netizens who fed these rumors into
cyberspace surely hoped for, and got, action (McNair, 2006). Tens of
thousands of concerned citizens took to the streets, peacefully at first, with
staged candlelight demonstrations, but as the gossip and misinformation
turned to urban myth and assumed fact, and as the government appeared
unwilling to remove beef from the FTA table (President Lee said his
government was “baffled by the spread of unfounded rumors about mad
cow disease”), protests grew into the hundreds of thousands, disrupting
the goings-on at the city’s center, and, consequently, prompting the police
to use force (Choi, 2008; CNN). Hundreds of police officers and citizens
were injured in the resulting melees (Choe, 2008).
Lending to the pessimistic aspect of chaos’s accessibility and
inter(activity) (more people having access to information and the ability
to interact with that information), even testimonies by scientists that
debunked the rampant rumors were ignored, drowned out by the buzz
of fear and paranoia (Cho, 2008). Meanwhile, other factions utilized
the large demonstrations to express their overall dissatisfaction with the
newly elected President Lee or educational policies, or any number of
conservative ideologies—the fluidity of protestation facilitated fringe
group involvement (Kirk, 2008). The government found itself in a
conundrum as the rumors took over; the people rose to demand change
or else, and any further crackdown would trigger memories of previous
crackdowns during the fight for democracy under military dictatorships in
the 1980s. Hamstrung, the government renegotiated the FTA to preclude
any beef from cattle more than 30 months old (older cows are said to
have a higher likelihood of carrying the disease)—this was similar to
agreements with Taiwan and Japan (Farivar, 2011). Protests abated.
But the government was not simply moving along—some
control measure had to be put in place. In July it announced measures to
reduce “illegal or slanderous online material” by expanding an “identity
verification system” it had implemented a year before requiring sites with
more than 300,000 daily visitors to allow comments only by individuals
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whom registered with their residence registration numbers thereby
curbing anonymous commentary. The new restriction would require any
site with 100,000 daily visitors to abide by the restriction. (JoongAng Ilbo,
2008).
In October the government finally used the Electronic
Communication Fundamental Law to prosecute two people who created
and circulated online rumors that riot police officers had killed a female
demonstrator, and had sexually assaulted another during the protests. Both
were convicted (Choi, 2009).
When Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant
experienced a meltdown on March 11, 2011, New Media in South Korea
(and worldwide) took to the keyboards to pump as much (mis)information
as possible into cyberspace and beyond. A March 17 editorial in the Korea
JoongAng Daily titled “To Catch a Lie” framed the situation:
Groundless rumors are again spreading around Korea in the wake
of the cataclysmic earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Mobile phone
text messages and Twitter messages warned that radioactive
material from the nuclear facility in Japan would reach South
Korea soon.
One such message read: “The No. 2 nuclear reactor at the
Fukushima power plant has exploded, and the direction of the
wind has also changed toward Korea. Stay indoors as long as
possible.”
The government was fuming and the police sought out the
culprit who was “the source of a false radiation warning that spread
nationwide through text messages and social networking Web sites,” and
could “depending on the purpose (of the source who) sent this kind of
message,…be a subject of criminal punishment,” according to Seo Hyunsoo, chief of the police’s Cyber Terror Response Center (Yonhap, 2011).
The perpetrator would be charged under the aforementioned Electronic
Communication Fundamental Law.
Meanwhile traditional media tried to separate the wheat from the
chafe. In the nation’s largest newspaper, a detailed explanation of radiation
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dangers titled “Is Korea Safe from Japan Radiation?” included the following
assessment:
The Korea Meteorological Administration recently conducted a
simulation that looked into what would happen if a major radiation
leakage occurred at the Japanese power station. The KMA said
there is only a slim chance that radioactive materials like
strontium, cesium and iodine would be carried by winds all the
way over to Korea. (Chosun Ilbo, 2011)
It was as if potential chaos—that of a cloud filled with
radioactivity—was being willed to the peninsula by panicked individuals
positioned in front of computer screens around the nation. The negative,
destructive aspect of chaos that McNair refers to was at play, and the
frightened and vulnerable populous didn’t know what to believe. In my
prep school classes we discussed the misinformation after several students
said they or their mother had received a text message or read a blog post
about the approaching radiation that would fall within the forecast rain and
contaminate anything it touched. One girl said her mother insisted she
could not go out, even to school. In fact, more than 100 schools closed
in the Seoul area despite assurances from the Korea Institute of Nuclear
Safety that only “miniscule amounts” of radiation had been detected, and
from the Korea Meteorological Administration that it would be “difficult
for the air over Fukushima to directly transfer to the Korean Peninsula”
given the easterly flow of the jet stream (Kim, 2011). Facts no longer
mattered within the info anarchy, and the government couldn’t control
the narrative as people bought supplies in a panic. Yet as no one’s skin
reddened and the scientific monitoring stations detected trace radiation
(most of it from China), people calmed and returned to everyday life. The
duped and naïve, in my experience, shrugged off their behavior by claiming
the obvious: Well, it’s a good thing it didn’t happen.
Two Men, One Government and the Internet
As the Global Financial Crises swept across the planet in 2008, an
unemployed 31-year-old Korean man with no formal economic education,
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sat at his home computer each evening posting economic assessments
and forecasts about South Korea on the popular Daum Agora forum;
still hoping to earn a four-year degree in economics, he studied for the
university entrance exam each day at a local university library (Schwartz,
2009). The man, just another anonymous user, (though he submitted his
national ID and phone numbers when setting up the Daum account) had
decided to call himself Minerva after the Roman goddess of wisdom and
went about spreading that wisdom, however dire it may have been.
Following the collapse of Lehman Brothers in mid-September,
which he’d predicted, his star rose rapidly, and people began to wonder
who this economic seer was and how he possessed such knowledge (Choe,
2009a). Headlines like “Minerva: Economy’s mystery seer” began to fill
media reports with much of the same content as the following:
The faceless prophet has written over 200 analyses and
predictions…Some even call him the “Internet economy
president,” and large groups of people online now hang on his
every word. Some even suggested ousting the nation’s top
economist, Finance Minister Kang Man-soo, and replacing him
with Minerva. (Lee, H., 2008)
The invisible prophet continued to churn out punditry under
anonymity while revealing minor details about his “background” as a
former Wall Street broker with a master’s degree from overseas, both lies
(Choe, 2009b). As the economy worsened, Minerva’s popularity increased
and with more notoriety came the danger that he would be exposed, an
exposure that would surely reveal his lack of education in a country where
education means everything, especially if you’re making authoritative
predictions.
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In October, Minerva received a call from Daum asking if he’d
like to speak with a reporter. He hung up in alarm—no one knew his
secret—remembering that Daum had his registration information. Had
he been exposed? A month later the government asked Minerva to step
forward. He didn’t, and, consequently, the attorney general announced
an investigation into his identity (Schwartz, 2009). The government made
it appear as if its hand had been forced. Then, according to prosecutors,
on Dec. 29 Minerva made another post stating that Korean authorities
sent “an emergency order to seven major financial institutions and major
exporting companies to stop U.S. dollar purchases beginning at 2:30 p.m.”
in order to stabilize the Korean currency (Park & Jung, 2009). The local
currency market went berserk as chaos—caused by Minerva—took over.
The government denied any emergency order.
A few days later, as he was getting ready to go out with friends, a
knock came at the door behind which stood four plainclothes investigators
ready to serve a search warrant (Schwartz, 2009). The jig was up for Park
Dae-sung. The government had had enough. “There was no complaint
filed against Park, but it was certain that he spread false rumors, so we
launched our own investigation,” said a senior prosecutor in charge of the
investigation (Park & Jung, 2009). Recognize the usage of “false rumors”?
The lingo of the Electronic Communication Fundamental Law under
which he would be prosecuted. The butterfly’s wings had been clipped.
Interestingly, it seems Park would’ve stopped blogging altogether without
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his arrest. Fear had overtaken him and he’d posted a farewell message on
Daum a day before the knock on his door (Schwartz, 2009).
Still the government needed to set an example by bringing him
to trial even though just revealing his true identity to the Korean public
would have been enough. At his January indictment prosecutors said Park
had “harmed the public interest by spreading allegedly false information
while being aware that he was a highly recognized figure in cyberspace”
and that he caused “intangible losses”—such as a weakened sovereign
rating —as well as “tangible losses in the country’s foreign currency
market” (Ser, 2009). From January until his April trial he was held in the
Seoul Detention Center and interrogated. As his trial opened, so did the
closet where his true identity hanged (that of an unemployed dilettante),
thereby sending Minerva’s prophet status into the gutter. Prosecutors
pressed for an 18 month prison sentence but after one expert testifying
on Park’s behalf (a prominent Korean economics professor and former
presidential advisor) said that Park was a better teacher than he and that
even he “was surprised about his lack of a formal economics background,”
the judge agreed, declaring that even if some of the posts were inaccurate,
Park strongly believed them. He was acquitted. Nevertheless, the
government’s desire to put a lid on Minerva’s chaos succeeded, and as he
said following his acquittal, “I regret what I did…I don’t think I’ll ever
blog again, not in South Korea” (Choe, 2009b).
The government moved on a second case when, in early January of
2012, prosecutors detained 23-year-old Twitter user, Park Jung-geun, for
reposting messages from the North Korean government’s Twitter account
claiming that he violated the NSL. The account, Uriminzokkiri.com, is
often quoted in South Korean media, and known as a source of propaganda
(Ser & Lee, 2012). According to reports, this was the first time that
anyone has been prosecuted for retweeting North Korean propaganda, and
the prosecutors say that over two years, Park retweeted 96 postings from
the Uriminzokkiri account and posted 34 pro-North messages; All of the
retweets praised Pyongyang, and Park’s own tweets included arguments
that were deemed NSL violations, and could land him with seven years in
prison (Ser & Lee, 2012).
Park also uploaded an image (see below) on which he’d
superimposed his sad face as that of a North Korean soldier, and replaced
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Ten months after his arrest, Park received a suspended 10 month
prison sentence for violating Article 7 of the NSL; though the judge
admitted some of the posts contained parody, he said Park’s overall actions
were equivalent to “supporting and joining forces with an antistate entity,”
a clear reference to NSL rhetoric (Choe 2012b). Not long after Park’s
detainment and the news of his story, Amnesty International took notice
and started to look into the facts of the case as it related to the overall use
of the NSL to limit freedom of expression. Speaking with Park after the
sentencing they found the process itself had done enough damage:
[He] says the whole process has left him physically and mentally
exhausted, he has difficulty sleeping, suffers from nerves and is
seeking treatment for stress. “Even though I disagree with North
Korean communism, I’m interested in North Korean culture...I
have a right to know about it, to express my freedom.” Park
Jeong-geun feels that as a target of an NSL investigation “my brain
belongs to the state. (Amnesty International)
Just as with Park Dae-sung in the Minerva case, the state’s
efforts to use coercive and regulatory measures to control the chaos of
New Media (online forums and Twitter in the two Park’s cases) that has
destabilizing potential, incorporated the traditional state tools—the
police and prosecution—to upend the lives of those considered threats.
The difference here, I believe, is that two decades ago and beyond, the
judges would have thrown away the key, if either man ever lived to see a
trial. Back in the first year of its enactment, the NSL “was used to arrest
or imprison 188,621 people. Almost a decade later, opposition Social
Democrat presidential candidate Cho Bong Ahm was sentenced to death
and executed the following year” (Kraft, 2012). Times have changed
with democratization which could be seen as the sort of evolutionism that
Pieterse mentions in reference to globalization.7
7. Pg. 51
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Master of Arts in Liberal Studies
Conclusion: Good and Bad Chaos—Who Knows Best?
In his preface, McNair proposes the “chaos paradigm” and the
“possibilities allowed by an emerging cultural chaos for dissent, openness
and diversity rather than closure, exclusivity and ideological homogeneity.”
With this he advances a “pragmatic cultural optimism,” the theory that
things have changed for the better with info anarchy, inter(activity),
accessibility et al. As this chaos encircles the planet fueled by technology,
Korea stands as a testing ground, a microcosm of the future given its
rapid adoption of cutting edge technological tools that allow the citizenry
instantaneous access to the shifting and evolving virtual public sphere,
a place where the consequences of chaos gestate before often spilling
out into the world beyond screens, the “real” world (for now, before
augmented reality) where people live and die, suffer and succeed.
As states struggle to control this brazen and unpredictable new
technological age, the definition and implications of “free” speech and
press for New Media are central concerns. For Amnesty International
and McNair to implore that nations permit all manner of info anarchy, of
rumors and hoaxes, of fear-mongering and panic-inducing posts, seems
rather absurd if one sits as the leader in Seoul or Beijing or New Delhi
or Brasilia. If, as happened in Seoul in 2008, rumors incite mass protests
where hundreds of thousands of people (or millions in the case of China or
India) fill the streets disrupting social order, then the concept of cultural
optimism falls flat on its face. There must be a mid-point between control
and chaos for states to maintain the order necessary for the stability of
society, and this will be relative to the social norms, the assemblage8 of
each nation, the cultural differentialism9 at play, and the idiosyncrasies of
the society. For now, in our current stage of globalization, beyond those
of Antiquity, the Middle Ages and Modernity, the nation state provides the
stability by which the peoples of the world may construct their lives, with,
for the most part, some sense of comfort. To optimistically insist that the
faucet should first be opened wide and then, later, we’ll see what results,
operates on the assumption that good will trump bad, that humans with
handleless technological10 tools shall strive predominantly for the ultimate
evolution of mankind, and that utopia and the reality of cyber-utopianism11
are not far from our reach. The naïveté of this thinking is self-evident.
Dartmouth College
John Rodgers
The great challenge, as Korea has shown, exists at the point of
excessive application of laws, old and new, to persecute potential threats.
Here, as the above cases have shown, the judiciary seems to have provided
the proper checks and balances. Nonetheless, by the time arrests have
been made and lives upended by the litigation process, much of the
damage has been done to individuals’ reputations in a society where it’s
hard to reinvent oneself. Therefore, more needs to be done at the front
end with the thorough evaluation of threats, and their potential and
actual effects. As with Minerva, a simple call or instant message might
have sufficed. In the case of Park Jung-geun, some sense of satire and
humor might have helped, yet it must be noted that the last North Korean
attack had occurred less than two years before. Again, maybe a simple
discussion without detainment would have straightened the situation out,
and provided both sides with some clarity. Above all, what I think I’ve
discovered during this report is that perhaps the inter(activity) that McNair
outlined could be applied to the state and the citizen to facilitate better
understanding in this chaotic new world, to avoid the kind of excessive
application of laws that occurred in the cases of the two Parks, and overall,
to control the chaos much like the metropolis of Seoul on any given day.
8. Wise says “the assemblage is not just a person and his or her things but the relation among all these things, the
qualities of these things, their meanings and ideas, habits and rhythms” (pg. 19).
9. Pieterse writes, “Both nationalism and race thinking bear the stamp of cultural differentialism, one
emphasizing territory and language, and the other biology as destiny.”
10. Evgeny Morozov mentions this in The Net Delusion (2011), referencing Langdon Winner who said,
“Although virtually limitless in their power, our technologies are tools without handles” (pg. 31).
11. Morozov refers to this as “a quasi-religious belief in the power of the Internet to do supernatural things,
from eradicating illiteracy in Africa to organizing all of the world’s information...” (pg. 19).
The Journal
Master of Arts in Liberal Studies
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