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South Korea: American Missionary Sue North Korea for Sexual Torture

Lee Yoo Eun — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 01:32:36 +0000

Robert Park, a Korean-American missionary and human rights activist who went to North Korea on 2009, sued North Korea for sexual torture. Park crossed into the country in protest of North Korea's human rights atrocity. However, as Marmot's Hole blogger wrote, the new has drawn some cynical reactions.

South Korea: Activist Indicted for Retweeting North Korean Messages

Lee Yoo Eun — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 09:33:35 +0000

South Korean prosecutors indicted a photographer and freedom-of-speech activist last week on charges of violating national security law, for retweeting messages posted by an official North Korean government Twitter account. Despite the international media's widespread coverage, the case went seriously under-reported in South Korean media.

This case has sparked another round of debate on the controversial national security law, which prohibits “acts benefiting the enemy” without specifying what constitutes such acts.

Controversial tweets

Park Jung-geun, 23, was detained last month, but the incident actually goes back to September 2010, when police raided his photo studio in Seoul. According to one news report [ko], Park, from 2010 March to January 2011, with his two Twitter accounts (@seouldecadence, @dprkdecadence), retweeted about 102 messages originally tweeted by North Korean Twitter account @uriminzok. He also tweeted 30 links that led to North Korean video content.

Twitter profile image of user @windburial, the user switched to this image created by Park in order to show his support to Park.

The overall number of Park's “problematic” tweets is 384, which is only about 0.5 per cent of his entire tweets. In his trial, these tweets were depicted as “an expression of an agreement with the enemy's (referring to North Korea) propaganda” and were accused of “promoting the enemy's messages”.

Park claimed his retweets were a joke made to lampoon the North Korean regime and explained that the misunderstanding rose from reading his tweets out of context.

For instance, Park tweeted a tweaked image of a North Korean poster (see right). Using a typically North Korean poster, which are usually aggressive, warmongering and whose major color is red, Park replaced the soldier's face with his own face and the rifle with a bottle of whisky.

In another example, Park compared himself to North Korea's new heir, Kim Jong-un, since like Kim, he had ‘inherited' something from his father, which in Park's case is a photo studio.

South Korean media silence

What has baffled South Koreans however, is that although the police raided Park's studio last year and there has been quite strong opposition against the case online (including the creation of Internet photo memes of Park), recent updates have mostly come from the international media. Until local media reported about this unusual flow of information, Park's indictment was fairly new to the South Korean general public.

Hong Sung-soo (@sungsooh) tweeted [ko]:

“北 풍자한 박정근이 이적행위?”…외신 일제히 비판 : bit.ly/yK0WtI 뉴욕타임스, 워싱턴포스트, AP, AFP, UPI, CBS, MSNBC, 더 오스트레일리안, BBC… 외신보도 슈퍼 그랜드슬램 달성!!

“Really? Has Park committed national treason by lampooning North Korea?” Foreign media unanimously criticized (the indictment), including the New York Times, Washington Post, AP, AFP, UPI, CBS, MSNBC, the Australian, BBC - Congratulations on hitting the Grand Slam in the international media coverage.

A journalist from progressive newspaper, Huh Jae-yeon (@welovehani) tweeted [ko]:

우리만 보도안하고 있음

Only we - the Korean media - are remaining silent on this matter.

A Twitter account has been set up to support Park (@freepark_bot), summarizing[ko] in just one sentence what his real charge is:

박정근의 죄목: 트위터로 이것저것 한 거

The name of Mr. Park's crime: Trying this and that on Twitter.

Internet photo meme

Here are some of the meme photos produced back in September 2011, consolidated by Wiki Tree: firstly, starting with Park's original Twitter profile photo:

Park's original Twitter profile image, Image from his account @seouldecadence

Profile image of Twitter user @blu_pn. Posted on Wiki Tree site, CC

The image above shows Park's image with him holding a large blue pen. The tweet [ko] read:

I've switched my profile photo. (Sorry for using Park Jung-geun's photo without permission) It is to voice opposition against the government authority's raid on Mr. Park. I have never met Mr.Park, neither am I a socialist party member (like Park himself). I am not even his follower. But as a member of our civil society, I support his rights to freedom of speech!

Some of the messages from the Wiki Tree link [ko] read…

Twitter user @yawoori [ko]:

우리 모두는 박정근이다!

We are all Park Jung-geun!

Twitter user @Chocoberryp [ko]:

프로필 제 사진 아닙니다. ‘국가보안법 위반'이라는 이유로 박정근님에 대한 압수수색에 항의하는 의미에서 수많은 사람들이 프로필에 박정근을 자처하고 있습니다.

This profile photo is not mine. Many people have changed their Twitter profile photos to Park's image as an expression of protest against the police raid on Mr. Park, which was done under the name of ‘violation of the national security law'

Various Internet meme photos of Park Jung-geun, Posted in the Wiki Tree site, CC

Twitter user @Solidaritat [ko]:

이토록 많은 박정근을 죄다 가두지는 못할 것이며, 또 이토록 많은 박정근으로 인해 그 한 명의 박정근은 반드시 자유로워질 것이다. 필시 그리될 것이다.

They cannot arrest all these Park Jung-geuns. And thanks to all these numerous Park Jung-geuns, that one Park Jung-geun will be set free. That will eventually happen.

Rights advocates, including Amnesty International, released a statement to voice worries that the law “has a chilling effect on freedom of expression in South Korea” and “is used not to address threats to national security, but instead to intimidate people and limit their rights to free speech”.

Park's socialist party filed an online petition [ko] denouncing such decision as “an abuse of the national security law which is an icon of the military, authoritarian regime era”.

The remaining problem is that still a considerable number of Korean public are in support of this controversial law under which a considerable number of innocent citizens have been arrested and detained. Kim Nakho (@capcold), who has a Twitter profile photo that tweaked Park's profile image, tweeted [ko]:

어처구니없는 박정근 구속…보다 그에 관한 외신보도 때문에 급 조명받는 시대착오 국보법. 이왕 관심 가진 김에, 왜 그게 지금껏 살아있는지에 대해도 관심을. 국보법 없으면 국가보안 망한다 믿는 평범한 많은 이들의 학습능력 결여된 지지 말이다.

Park's arrest is so outrageous. What is more ridiculous is that this outdated national security law that recently caught the attention of the media because of the international media's coverage on it. Since we have started looking into this matter, we should focus on why that law has survived til now. It is because the ordinary people who so blindly bought into the notion that if the national security law stops existing, national security will be compromised. Those people who support the law for that reason are really lack the educational ability [lack understanding].

USA: Koreans in L.A. Protesting for Leading Critic of President

Lee Yoo Eun — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 22:05:15 +0000

South Koreans in Los Angeles, United States, held a protest (video) for the immediate release of Chung Bong-ju, popular on-line critic of South Korean President Mr. Chung was thrown into prison after being convicted of spreading rumors/information connecting Mr. Lee to allegations of stock fraud.

North Korean Defectors and Their Shattered American Dream

Lee Yoo Eun — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 19:08:34 +0000

Marmot's Hole blog wrote regarding a news report on the hardships North Korean defectors face in the United States. As of 2011, more than 400 North Korean defectors were living in the United States and there was a surge of defectors after 2004 when US passed the North Korean Human Rights Act.

South Korea: Kids Become Outcasts for Not Having Branded Bags

Lee Yoo Eun — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:54:41 +0000

Blogger Hangukdrama wrote on South Korean elementary children's craze over expensive and branded school bags and how this behavior has been encouraged by parents, who concerned that their kids would become outcasts if they are seen with ‘cheaper bags’, kept buying the bags.

South Korea : Pizza Appears in Lunar New Year's Ancestral Worship

Lee Yoo Eun — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 16:07:50 +0000

Sharing food with relatives that had been offered in the ancestral worship is regarded as the essence of the traditional Lunar New Year holiday in Korea and there are strict and complicated rules to follow in offering food. However, some young Koreans have started offering unconventional food, such as pizza, prompting serious controversy.

North Korea: Kim Jong-Un Looking at Things.

Lee Yoo Eun — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 15:29:52 +0000

There was once the internet meme named “Kim Jong-il Looking at Things“, a collection of photographs of Kim visiting government facilities the net users have gathered together to mock his authoritative posture. After Kim died last year, net users have launched a new version, “Kim Jong-un Looking at Things” as appeared in Kotaku site.

South Korea: ‘Torture Expert'-Turned-Pastor Loses Pastorship Amid Criticism

Lee Yoo Eun — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 19:44:30 +0000

Lee Geun-an is a former ‘torture expert’, notorious for his brutal ways of torture on numerous democratic activists under authoritarian rules in 1970s and 80s. After serving 7 years in prison, he became a Protestant pastor, but was kicked out of his job as his shameless and unrepenting comments prompt public criticism [ko].

South Korea: National Security Law Draws Intense Criticism

Lee Yoo Eun — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 16:31:41 +0000

North Korea Tech wrote a blog post on South Korea’s controversial National Security Law that bans display and distribution of North Korean material. Recently, several citizens were arrested under this law for posting seemingly benign North Korean songs or news clips.

North Korea Punishing People Who Did Not Mourn Enough for Kim Jong Il

Lee Yoo Eun — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 15:09:01 +0000

A news report came out saying North Korean authorities have begun to punish citizens who did not display enough sadness at Kim Jong Il's funeral. Bloggers have already raised suspicions that the hysterical mourning may not be genuine. Net user kmarko posted sample photos of citizens who seem indifferent.

South Korea: Anger and Suspicion Grows Over Election Rigging

Lee Yoo Eun — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 17:51:29 +0000

A political scandal is brewing in South Korea over alleged election rigging. Despite the police's conclusion that the nation's election commission website was disconnected due to a distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack carried out at the individual level, tech-savvy younger people have defined the case as a carefully thought out election rigging manipulated by political powers.

They suspect the disconnection was caused to disrupt a local by-election in favor of the ruling party and have demanded a thorough reinvestigation by special prosecutors or even a parliamentary audit.

A strange experience

On the morning of October 26, 2011, voters had a strange experience. Although they could access the National Election Commission's website, the web page where they type in their address to search for their voting booth was disabled. This partial disconnection continued for about two hours from 6 am to 8 am, before the entire website was inaccesible for next hour or so.

This time of day is commonly when commuters, especially progressive young people, hurriedly go to cast their vote before they go to work. Many IT experts, lead by the famous political podcast show Naggomsu's (”I am a petty-minded creep”) initial report, started doubting the police version of the story.

Starting from mid-December 2011, top universities in South Korea have joined the protest against the police explanation and redefined the case as ‘election rigging' done by insiders and ordered by political powers. On January 5, 2012, over 30 major universities [ko] released a joint statement demanding a thorough investigation and punishment on allegedly involved people, from the government and the ruling party.

The nation’s top ranked Seoul National University wrote [ko] in its statement “some of the fraudulent actions during the October 26 by-election is the worst crime done to undermine the very foundation of this nation’s democracy.”

The grassroots petition [ko] has gathered about 2,700 student signatures. One of top tier universities, where the president himself studied, Korea University has opened a special webpage [ko] dedicated to posting a similar statement and gathering signatures. The statement calls to “immediately stop influencing the investigation on the election site malfunction” and warns to “never even dream” of minimizing the case.

Another prestigious university, KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) set up a similar web page [ko] on December 3, where they defined the case as “an unprecedented election fraud” and added “they lamented that they see some evidences that the ruling party and the presidential house are involved in the case”.

This petition gathered about 700 signatures.

Photo of student protest on January 5, 2012. Posted on the Wiki Tree site, Creative Commons License.

Twitter users welcomed the students' joint action. A historian, Jeon Woo-young (@histopian) tweeted [ko]:

정부가 국민을 어린애 취급하니 예전에는 ‘노인들'이나 하던 ‘시국선언'을 대학생들이 하는군요. 예전에는 검찰이 정부 비판하는 학생들더러 ‘일부 몰지각한 학생'이라고 그랬습니다. 이제는 학생들이 검찰보고 ‘대다수 몰상식한 검사'라고 할 판이네요.

Since our government treated its people like a child, the college students have started sending warning signals by defining this ‘a (democratic) crisis situation'. This kind of action was usually done by senior citizens. In the past, the prosecutors called the students who criticize the government as 'some thoughtless students'. Now, the situation has shifted and the citizens call those prosecutors ‘most mindless prosecutors'.

Reactions

Police have already arrested a personal assistant of ruling party lawmaker Choi Gu-sik over the alleged cyber-assault on the National Election Commission site and claimed that they, with other assistants of politicians, carried out the attack, adding the governing political party has no connection to this incident (Choi departed his party right after the allegation).

Lawmaker Choi called this case as a “prank” pulled out by young daredevil hackers [ko]. The nation's major conservative newspaper went even further and reported [ko] that the hacker was under the influence of alcohol, panicked after finding out that his attack actually worked, but continued to hack anyway since he was unable to stop the attack he had initiated. This news article by Chosun ended up being posted in Today's Humor site [ko].

One of the nation's influential political bloggers, IamPeter, in a post [ko] ridiculed such news reports by posting a screen capture image of a DDOS hacking tool that has not only the STOP command but a STOP button and raised suspicions on Choi's excuse that he had not been aware of his assistant's criminal background or his hacking. The assistant is believed to have been one of the closest people in his inner circle.

This allegation was first raised by Naggomsu, South Korea's most popular political podcast, right after the election. Hosts of the show suggested that it is nearly impossible to find that kind of attack pattern unless someone from inside the National Election Commission had cut the connection to specific databases. Computer geeks and technical specialists chimed in and stressed that it is extremely rare to knock specific databases offline with a DDOS attack.

One Twitter user who works in the IT field, Kim Seong-ju (@kimseongjoo), tweeted [ko]:

DDoS공격으로 DB서버만 끊는 것 재연하라!!! #1026부정선거

[If you want to convince us] Try to cut only the DB [database] server (while keeping the others intact) with [a] DDOS attack in front of our eyes!! #Oct26ElectionRigging

A software developer and active Twitter user who has more than 20,000 followers, Barry Lee (@barry_lee), wrote [ko] about the case in detail in his blog. The National Election Commission apparently have two servers, one is www.nec.go.kr (the main one) and the other info.nec.go.kr. The latter ‘info' server is the one containing information on people's voting booths matching their addresses. On the election day, this ‘info' server could not be accessed the whole time:

디도스 공격만으로는 데이터베이스 서버만 죽이기는 불가능에 가깝습니다. 유일한 가능성은 웹 페이지 프로그램을 잘못 개발해서 너무 비정상적으로 데이터 처리속도가 오래 걸릴 경우인데, 현실적으로는 일어나기 힘든 케이스 입니다. 보도에 따르면 200대의 좀비PC를 이용해 263MBps 의 용량(bandwidth) 으로 공격이 이루어졌다고 합니다. 그런데 이 정도 bandwidth는 웬만한 접속만으로도 나온다고 합니다. 200대 좀비피씨의 공격도 3-4년전 사용되던 급의 서버만으로도 감당하고도 남는다고 합니다. 더 결정적인 것은 몇년전 디도스 대란 이후 정부 기관은 디도스 방어장비를 구매했다는 보도가 있으며…

It is nearly impossible to kill the database server separately with a DDOS attack. The only possible explanation (other than DDOS) is to assume a tech guy had programmed the election commission web page all wrong in the first place that it requires an unusually large amount of time in processing the data. And that is a very unlikable scenario. According to a news report (on the police investigation), the [DDOS] attack had been carried out by 200 Zombie PCs with networks using 263 MBps bandwidth. But this amount of bandwidth can be seen in any ordinary connection. And the [volume of] attack by 200 Zombie PCs - that can be blocked with the old server that had been used (by government entities) three, four years earlier. Perfectly negating their argument: there are news reports that the government entities have bought new anti-DDOS security devices after the DDOS fiasco a few years ago…

Then the blogger suggested disclosing the access log file to dispel the controversy that is growing bigger everyday. The blogosphere is looming with posts analyzing the case from more hard-core technical perspectives. Blogger Parallel Equalitarian published an extensive post [ko] with screen capture images of the influx to the site; blogger Minix, another IT expert, wrote a detailed post [ko] that visits every possible attack scenario, such as UDT or SYN flood attacks and PPS attacks, and negates them one by one.

There is a minority of tech bloggers who denounce the claim as a conspiracy theory. But even a blogger from the moderate side wrote [ko] that disclosing the access log file would be helpful, though not necessary, and commented that whether it is proven to be a DDOS attack or not, the fact that citizens are focusing on some errors that happened during the election process is meaningful itself.

U.S.A : Pizza Chain Employee Uses Racial Slur Against Asian Woman

Lee Yoo Eun — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 17:57:34 +0000

A Papa John’s employee in New York city identified a Korean woman named Minhee Cho as “lady chinky eyes”. This racial slur against Asians caught the attention of local and international media as Cho tweeted a photo of the receipt.

South Korea: A Teenage Boy's Anti Suicide Campaign Video

Lee Yoo Eun — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 06:23:05 +0000

A spate of student suicides occurred recently in South Korea due to mindlessly violent school bullying. While some schools hushed up the case for the sake of their reputation, a 18-year-old student made this short video [ko] to raise public awareness. (There is no English subtitle yet)

South Korea: Students Protest Against Election Rigging

Lee Yoo Eun — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 06:08:40 +0000

As suspicion and anger grow over the ruling party's election rigging, students from South Korea's major universities gathered together to release a joint statement calling for a thorough reinvestigation of the case. One net user posted photos of the student protest in Daum Agora, the nation's biggest public forum.

South Korea: Satirial Podcast's Popularity Continues Despite the Host's Arrest

Lee Yoo Eun — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 22:30:01 +0000

Naggomsu is a satirical podcast which gained tremendous popularity in South Korea for lampooning the country's President. Even after one of its host was jailed for raising allegations of stock price manipulation against the President, the podcast's popularity continues to grow. The nation's influential blogger IamPeter picked [ko] it as the top news of 2011.