No online porn for you! (if you're Korean)
Lucie Shin's paper on how the South Korean government regulated access to North Korea-related websites on the Internet prompted me to write about the recent news that South Korea will now ban access to pornography of foreign origin on the Internet (see also here and here).
A few things struck me about this situation:
1. This fits in very neatly with the ideas that Lucie brought up in her paper. The Korean government can't say that they're "censoring" anything because that would be unconstitutional, but they can "monitor" illegal activities. Issues about privacy and free expression can also be circumvented when dealing with youth since protecting them is of utmost moral import. In an attempt to connect this to the discussion about Marxism from last class, whatever myth is being supported--as part of an ideology the government (as an Ideological State Apparatus) is trying to defend-- definitely does not reflect reality. There are people who want to download porn and probably don't want to be "protected" by the government from its damaging content.
2. I found it interesting that private companies are joining with the government to uphold this new ban. This seems to reflect the close relationship that Internet companies have had with the government in the past (governmental investment in bulking up the IT industry in Korea) and the connectedness they still share.
3. I was intrigued by the specific incrimination of foreign porn sites, which makes me wonder about what domestic sex industries are like. Although we live in a time of globalization, and I can definitely believe that the sheer number of foreign porn sites would outnumber any Korean output, I don't believe that Koreans aren't and won't produce their own material.
4. This also makes me think about the nature of popular culture in South Korea. Keith Howard talked about how certain scandalous things that singers and musicians were doing or wearing were banned from TV broadcasts in the 1990s. It is easy to think about popular culture as things ordinary people do or consume, but we can't forget how bigger social, political, and cultural institutions affect what people have access to and how they can participate in popular culture. I wonder how Koreans will negotiate this new ban on online porn.
posted by So Jin @ 6:19 PM
3 Comments:
wow. i am really shocked by this article. I dont know if i'm understanding it correctly but is the Korean gov't with the help of some private companies going to ban ALL porn site access in Korea or just the foreign ones? Ok, so if they're only banning the foriegn ones, doesn't that violate some cyber trade law? Does the korean gov't want all their porn watchers to watch domestic, most likely Korean/Asian porn? What about the freaky stuff like animal and other weird taboos? A friend of a friend was completely outraged by this news. Such a ban on foreign porn i feel def violates a person's rights and pure marxism is at work in this case. And to answer so jin's question about Korans will "negotiate" with this new ban, i i feel like only the foriegn tourists/businessmen will suffer from the new inhibition. All the young, vibrant, hormone filled kids want and will find a way to get their jollies on. Serious.
Banning foreign porn sites does seem like the government and private companies are trying to pick and choose what's "best" for the people. It all comes down to who has the power to control. I do question the sex business in Korea, like you mentioned. Are they trying to domesticate everything? It seems a bit too much, especially because watching porn (imported or domestic) doesn't really "harm" anyone. I was watching a clip on CNN about this boy who made a homemade bomb with a cocktail of chemicals and almost blew his eyes out. I do think that internet "monitoring" is necessisary to some extent or at least put restrictions on who can access the sites that can potentially kill you or harm other people. It's just so that people don't do stupid things without knowing the consequences. Anyways, going back to porn, I think the government and these companies are trying too hard to empower themselves.
This reaction doesn't seem proportionate to the offense. Some young prankster uploaded some hot action on Yahoo Korea: the problem started and ended domestically. Why drag foreign porn into this? Privately owned sites like Yahoo, Daum or Naver have every right to moderate their own content, and the lapse is their fault as well. The first article mentions the reasoning near the end as "to protect the youth from the sexually oriented unsolicited materials". On a public portal like Yahoo, the material came unsolicited. If a Korean fires up google and searches for "foreign+porn+xxx+german+live+striptease+ALL+NUDE" then this is clearly not unsolicited, and is straight up censorship.
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