This briefing comes from Korea View, a weekly newsletter published by the Korea Economic Institute. Korea View aims to cover developments that reveal trends on the Korean Peninsula but receive little attention in the United States. If you would like to sign up, please find the online form here.

What Happened

• On June 6, a South Korean court denied a U.S. request for the extradition of Son Jong-woo, 24, who ran one of the world’s largest child porn sites. Son already served his 18-month sentence issued by a local court.
• Son was first arrested in March 2018 after a U.S. Justice Department investigation tracked bitcoin transactions back to him.
• In response to public outcry over the court decision, National Assembly Delegate Song Young-gil introduced a bill to the legislature that would revise the extradition law to allow appeals of court rulings on extraditions.

Implications: Despite the increasingly borderless nature of crimes perpetrated online, South Korea is struggling to approach this challenge with an international outlook. The courts argued that keeping Son in South Korea would help local authorities find domestic consumers of child pornography, demonstrating the priority placed on prosecuting South Korean offenders. This is despite the U.S. Justice Department’s finding that users of the site come from countries including the United States, Spain, and the United Kingdom.

Context: The decision comes just a few months after South Korea was rocked by the massive Nth Room online sex trafficking scandal, which also led to harsh criticism of the sentencing of sex offenders. In April, the National Assembly made viewing illegally filmed sexual content punishable by up to three years in prison. Previously, this had not been a crime. Users of Son Jong-woo’s now-defunct site who were convicted in the United States received sentences of five to fifteen years in prison.

Korea View was edited by Yong Kwon with the help of James Constant and Sonia Kim.

Image from Markus Spiske’s photostream on flickr Creative Commons.

This briefing comes from Korea View, a weekly newsletter published by the Korea Economic Institute. Korea View aims to cover developments that reveal trends on the Korean Peninsula but receive little attention in the United States. If you would like to sign up, please find the online form here.

What Happened

• K-pop singer and actress Sulli committed suicide after being subjected to prolonged online bullying.
• After the singer’s death, 7 out of 10 South Koreans supported the use of real names when making comments on websites and other online platforms.

Implications: The public’s demand for the abolition of anonymous online comments contradicts the Constitutional Court, which sees online platform’s enforcement of real names as a violation of free speech. Meanwhile, cases involving online rhetoric has also become a growing issue for the Ministry of Justice. Online defamation cases doubled between 2014 and 2018. These developments suggest that the government may push for measures that ensure greater individual accountability in online speech – but would need to take on a case that would overturn existing precedents.

Context: In 2007, the government introduced the real-name identification system for around 150 popular websites including news media. The following year, the ruling party tried to regulate the internet by punishing online slanders after Korean actress Choi Jin Sil committed suicide after being bullied online. However, the bill did not become law because many lawmakers were concerned that the government may infringe on people’s right to free speech. In 2018, the Constitutional Court backed this position and reiterated that anonymous online comments are protected under the South Korean constitution.

Korea View was edited by Yong Kwon with the help of Soojin Hwang, Hyoshin Kim, and Rachel Kirsch.

Picture from user Rob Fahey on flickr