“Illegal Site Blocking?” South Korean Netizens Highly Concerned, Oppose “Internet Censorship”

2019-2-13, NewDaily.com

Access to illegal websites [porn sites are illegal in South Korea] based overseas has been entirely shut down at the request of the South Korean government since November 2018. Netizens questioned the effectiveness of such measures and raised concern that “it could be the beginning of [mass] censorship [in South Korea].”

According to Victor News, which analyzed all of the news on Naver [a popular South Korean web portal] using WordMeter software on February 12, 2019, an article in Korea Economy (한국경제) titled “Examine URL Access Logs in the name of ‘Blocking Porn Sites?’” The government Feeds Controversy” ranked #1 with 2,167 recommendations.

The article stated that the internet service provider directly identified and blocked user data content at government’s request. The government has blocked the internet addresses of illegal sites in the past, but because users still could access the site if the URL had HTTPS instead of HTTP in front, the government took additional steps [to read the Server Name Indication packets to prevent HTTPS access].

However, it has been reported that there’s a risk of government monitoring and inspection with the new method. The Communication Privacy Protection Act (Article 2, Clause 7) states that “the act of learning or recording the contents of communication without the consent of parties falls under wiretapping/eavesdropping.” It is also problematic under the Constitution (Article 18), which states “all citizens secrecy of communication shall not be infringed upon.” [truncated]

“It is very unusual for a liberal democracy to censor the internet by blocking ‘https’ [secured websites, which require additional security measures] at government requests,” the article quoted experts as saying.

Most netizens expressed the view that they cannot understand the government policy. Comments:

Porn is an excuse and the real issue is [government] monitoring. [The Moon administration] has been saying [it shares] the ‘Chinese Dream’ and now it is following China [by monitoring its citizens on the internet] (agree: 8947, disagree: 155).

DNS tampering and packet interception…the same as the Golden Shield principle currently applied by China. [They will] eavesdrop on and sensor 50 million citizens in the name of blocking porn sites–a standard of a ‘similar democracy’ [Chinese or North Korean ‘People’s’ Democracy]. Later, [it will be] possible to block all the sites they don’t like. (agree: 4,916, disagree: 41)

[The government] keeps saying it’s for the people, but China and North Korea also said the same thing at the beginning and it sounded plausible then. (agree: 2,490, disagree: 28)