Difference between revisions of "Internet Censorship in South Korea"

Revision as of 18:59, 29 March 2019

Internet Censorship in South Korea is known to be fairly restrictive since it censors any type of pro-North Korea materials online and actively regulates the production / distribution of pornography. Due to these reasons, it represents Republic of Korea's (a.k.a. South Korea) unique traits of Internet environment. While freedom of expression is guaranteed like any other developed countries in the world, certain aspects are still considered to be conservative or oppressed.

Basic censorship

Politics

Since 1948, Republic of Korea had the National Security Act (NSA)^[1] that can imprison those who show empathy or favoritism for pro-North Korean materials. This was based on the fact that the government of Republic of Korea was established under the ideology of liberalism in 1948, which strongly opposed to what North Koreans were pursuing: communism. The 1990 Act on Exchanges and Collaboration^[1] depicts that citizens of R.O.K. should report to the government if there were any type of interaction with North Koreans or was in contact of materials that were somehow related to them. This was an enforced action made by the government in order to secure South Koreans from the spread of massive amount of communism ideology by North Korea. Information and Communications Network Act (ICNA)^[1] also acts as a barrier in the Internet environment by promoting website hosts to censor illegal or problematic materials as soon as they detect them. In addition, Information and Communications Network Act (ICNA) significantly contributed in founding legislative bills that protect politicians and effectively censor people who started to produce and distribute fake information about politicians while presidential election^[2]. Legal protection is provided in the court to those who conformed to this law, whenever there is a dispute about posting inappropriate contents online.

Pornography

Republic of Korea has been actively censoring pornography since the early 1980s when political censorship started to pick up speed. Republic of Korea defines pornography as any type of material that may contain homosexual, asexual concepts including child pornography. When Internet technology was not widely provided, the government enthusiastically censored those materials by confiscating seditious books or banning adult video production. As Internet technology flourished, regulations have changed in forms of banning websites that contained keywords government set, such as porn, child, gay, and lesbian^[3]. In the early 2000s, the government adopted a new technology that censored pornography websites by tracking http host servers. Once pornography or inappropriate contents where detected from a website, http censorship quickly identified where the host server was and provided information to the cyber security police.

SNI filtering

Recently, in February 2019, the Korean government announced that they will reinforce their Internet censorship by adopting a new technology called SNI filtering.

Mechanism

SNI filtering (Server Name Indication)^[4] is a new technology that is based on tracking https websites. 10 years ago, website addresses all started with http://, where http stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol^[5]. Hypertext Transfer Protocol is a technology that precedes the actual presentation of assigned webpage. Once a user requests data, HTTP technology is applied prior to loading. The "protocol" you made in order to call data from the server, is governed by this http technology first, and then sends back the information you requested. As numerous activities became available in the Internet, professionals felt the necessity to effectively secure sensitive data such as credit card numbers, social security numbers, personal medical records, etc. And that is when the https technology was developed - the extra S stands for secured, where all of your selected sensitive data is encrypted whenever the protocol is requested and sent to the host server^[5]. That way, not only people could protect invaders from hacking sensitive information, but also prevented random leaks that contained unexpected, raw data. Now, SNI filtering technology enforces the surveillance - it only allows connection to websites that are enrolled in the certificate. If the server is not certified by the government, SNI filtering will 'filter out' those inappropriate information and automatically send you to a alternate website that warns the user.

Ethical Issues

Concerns about no privacy

Invasion of privacy

SNI filtering technology was meant to be programmed in such a way that it only polices inappropriate websites. But the problem with using SNI filtering technology is that it gives too much authority to the person who is in control. The essence of this technology is that the programmer can obtain information about what kind of information users are trying to reach out to^[6]. The technology does not precisely track down every single step of access, but it does give data about keywords that were browsed or at least attempted to be used^[7]. The Korean government acknowledged the concerns that professionals raised and announced that they will not be using in such a way where every single person is censored of what they are doing. People in South Korea are very concerned they will lose their freedom of expression, which seemed to be well preserved for at least the last 20 years, and show anxiety of being watched all the time by the government. One citizen illustrated this situation as a disaster by comparing to the People's Republic of China, where the government actively censors materials that are posted in the Internet and banning global search engines such as Google and Youtube.

Surveillance

See Also For Comparison and Reference

• Censorship
• Internet Censorship in Hong Kong
• Censorship in China

References

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1 1.2} “Internet Laws: South Korea” lawless.tech, 15 Nov. 2018, https://lawless.tech/internet-laws-south-korea/ Political Censorship
2. ↑ “Amendment of the ICNA and the Korean Government’s plan to expand restrictions on the use and collection of resident registration numbers” LEXOLOGY, July. 2012, https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=94a8ed9d-31b4-4eda-8763-3053730fa511
3. ↑ “South Korea crusades against online pornography” LEXOLOGY, July. 2012, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2012/12/10/south-korea-porn/1758277/
4. ↑ “Server Name Indication” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Name_Indication
5. ↑ ^{5.0 5.1} “Is South Korea Sliding Toward Digital Dictatorship?” Forbes, 25 Feb. 2012, https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidvolodzko/2019/02/25/is-south-korea-sliding-toward-digital-dictatorship/#abab472648e2
6. ↑ “South Korea Expands Site Blocking Efforts with SNI Eavesdropping” TorrentFreak, 14 Feb. 2019, https://torrentfreak.com/south-korea-expands-site-blocking-efforts-with-sni-eavesdropping-190214/
7. ↑ “South Korea is Censoring the Internet by Snooping on SNI Traffic” BleepingComputer, 13 Feb. 2019, https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/south-korea-is-censoring-the-internet-by-snooping-on-sni-traffic/