The government of South Korea is working on plans to place more regulations on the Internet in the country.
South Korea is the most wired country in the world and the Internet played a major role in helping ex-Hyundai CEO Lee Myung Bak get elected president. Now the government is considering a Cyber Defamation Law.
“We have to guard against ‘infodemics,’ in which inaccurate, false information is disseminated, prompting social unrest that spreads like an epidemic,” Lee told parliament early in July.
The Cyber Defamation Law, which the Justice Ministry is working on, is aimed at the fact that “we lack the means to effectively deal with harmful Internet messages,” a ministry official said.
The Korean Communications Commission, which regulates the industry, has created its own rules to oblige portals to suspend sites stepping outside the limits and require Web sites to disclose the real names of anyone posting comments.
The commission says the goal of the regulations is to improve security and reduce the spread of false information.
The new rules have received criticism. “The regulations violate the autonomy of the Internet and are an effective tool for tighter media control by the government,” Lee Han-ki, senior editor at the citizen news Website OhMyNews told Reuters.
The regulations also have supporters. “The Internet media should also serve public good, and compared with other countries, South Korea has lacked the institutional control over the media, in which people tend to expand and reproduce unverified, one-sided information,” said Kweon Sang-hee, a journalism and mass communications professor at Sungkyunkwan University.
