By Nam Hyun-woo, Baek Byung-yeul and Park Ji-won
South Korea, one of the world’s IT powerhouses, hosted the Seoul Conference on Cyberspace 2013 on Oct. 17-18.
President
Park Geun-hye said in her speech on the first day of the conference
that the country has built an IT industry within a short period, helped
by the fastest Internet speeds in the world. She urged participants to
step up cross-border cooperation in order to create a healthy cyberspace
environment.
While the President is showing her
will to promote the use of cyberspace, the government has been placing
some restrictions on the Internet by blocking some services and forcing
netizens to use specific means when paying bills for online
transactions.
The National Intelligence Service is
currently under investigation over alleged violations of Internet
privacy, posting online views which could have influenced the voting of
citizens during last year’s presidential election.
Freedom
House, based in Washington D.C., which describes itself as “an
independent watchdog organization dedicated to the expansion of freedom
around the world,” released a report titled, “Freedom of the Net” on
Oct. 3. This ranks South Korea as 20th among 60 countries in terms of
Internet and media freedom after research was conducted between May 2012
and April 2013. The list places South Korea below Nigeria and Brazil.
Iceland took the top spot, with a 6 obstacles to access, limits on
content and violations of user rights, while South Korea acquired 32
negative points, resulting in a description of “Partly Free” on the
areas of freedom studied.
The report says that
political, social and/or religious content was blocked in Korea and
pro-government commentators manipulated online discussions. The current
chair of trustees at Freedom House is William H. Taft IV, who previously
served as chief legal advisor to the State Department during the
administration of George W. Bush.
Is this just
another report to ignore, or a warning that citizens here must pay heed
to so that we can understand the true extent, or rather lack of,
Internet freedom?
Limitation in Data access
As
a senior majoring in political science at a domestic university, Kim
Hwan-yong, 26, often visits government websites as reference sources for
his school papers. But he said that these websites offer little
information of any worth.
“I don’t even try to visit
the official pages of government agencies when I need some figures for
my school project. They are absolutely useless. The fastest and the
surest way to obtain what I need is to find other sources using google,”
Kim said.
Kim said that government websites in
Korea neither provide proper search engines for interested citizens, nor
post information at the right time.
“When I begin a
school project on current affairs, the first thing I used to do is
browse related news stories through Google or Naver. Then, I go to
related government web pages in order to obtain facts and figures, but
as expected, they usually don’t provide relevant documents,” he
continued.
Moreover, the web pages of government agencies are also poor at handling confidential information.
Rep.
Jin Sung-joon of the main opposition Democratic Party (DP) raised
suspicions about the security systems used by government agencies.
According
to Rep. Jin, the internal message board of the Ministry of National
Defense, which should only be accessible to those authorized, can be
easily accessed by searching through Google.
“For
example, just type in the search word, “key resolve” on Google. Anyone
can then find the exact schedule of the joint Key Resolve military
exercise between Korea and the United States,” Jin stated on the record
during a National Assembly inspection of government agencies on Oct. 14.
“Additionally,
by searching on domestic search engines such as Daum and Naver, anyone
can find the name of the radio-monitoring unit of the South Korean army
that monitors North Korean communications because they post job
advertisements for cleaners on a classified website.”
While
a few government agencies are apparently too careless to protect the
information they are entrusted with, the number of attempted hackings
into those web pages is estimated to be around 13,000 times during the
first half of this year alone, Rep. Park Nam-chun of the DP said during
an Assembly inspection on the same day.
The lawmaker
added that if this trend continues, the total number of hacking
attempts is expected to be over 20,000 at the end of the year.
Restricting Google Maps
Kim
Hyo-sang, a 33-year-old Korean American businessman, is working at the
New York branch of one of Korea’s top 30 conglomerates.
Kim,
who travels to Korea about once a month for business, complained about
how his latest smartphone is rendered useless in Korea.
“When
I am in New York, I don’t think about the need to purchase car
navigation because I can find anywhere I want to go with Google Maps,”
Kim said.
Google Maps is the most used map service
in the world and has become an essential tool for travelers everywhere.
Thanks to smartphones which have huge technological advances, Kim says
he can find anywhere he wants to find except in Seoul.
“As
it shows real-time information about accident and traffic jams on my
mobile device, Google Maps helps me find the fastest way to any
destination.”
But, he cannot use Google Maps as his car navigation when he rents and drives in Seoul.
“The
driving navigation just doesn’t work in Korea. When I turn on the
driving mode, it only mutters ‘can’t use on here.’ As I didn’t expect
this, I arrived late to my meeting by about an hour,” Kim said.
The
reason he can’t use Google Maps is because the government here
restricts use of it. Regulations against detailed information being
widely available were put in place after the Korean War to prevent the
authorities in Pyongyang gaining in-depth on-the-ground information.
Although these restrictions are more than 60 years old, they still
govern the use of current technology such as GPS systems. Such
governance may be considered as a necessary evil.
Forcing Active X to users
“The
government-led peculiar (Internet) certification system in Korea
isolates the country’s IT industry. In particular, an excessive use
of Active X framework significantly hinders a convenient use of the
internet.”
These were remarks made by independent
lawmaker Ahn Cheol-soo during last year’s presidential election
campaign, promising that he will stop the “monopoly” of Active X in
Korea’s Internet domain.
The software
mogul-turned-politician’s promise was somewhat technical and failed to
attract much attention. But his pledge caused repercussions for some
young people, fed up with the messages that constantly pop up when they
are forced to use Active X framework when surfing the Internet.
“The
government and local media outlets report that Korea is one of the most
web-wired countries in the world and its Internet environment is the
best in terms of penetration rate or access speeds. But, they always
neglect that the country has poor Internet freedom. Forcible use of
Active X is the most critical example for that,” said Kim Dong-chan, an
employee at an IT company in Seoul.
On most websites
for financial transactions in Korean domain and other Korean government
pages require users to authenticate themselves through Active X
plug-ins. Most of them run only on the Internet Explorer web browser
created by Microsoft, which also produced the Active X framework.
Many
young people like Kim complain that such additional Active X plug-ins
overloads their computers. What makes them more upset is that whenever
they have to install such a plug-in, the page refreshes and all the
information they typed on the page disappears.
“I’m
not trying to say which web browser is better, but there really are some
users who don’t want to use Internet Explorer or Windows. When you try
to make a payment online on Korean websites, using Internet Explorer is
compulsory, otherwise you cannot use online banking,” said Kim.
Many
question why the government or financial websites require users to use
services by only using Internet Explorer after installing a series of
Active X plug-ins.
In August, more than 200 experts engaged in debate over the issue.
“The
coercive government policy which forces users to authenticate
themselves through Active X programs means the Korean cyber security
industry lags behind on the international stage,” said Prof. Kim
Ki-chang at Korea University during the debate.
He pointed out that Korea’s confinement to Active X is because of the government’s policy and is not due to technical barriers.
“Since
the government has required use of Active X authentication systems from
the early stages of Korea’s online banking more than 13 years ago, no
banks and other companies dare to try stop using the Active X
framework,” he said.
Employee Kim, said that he does
not regard Ahn as a future leader of this country, but that his
election pledge was a convincing one.
“The government’s IT policy should be more detailed and user-focused as Ahn suggested,” he said.Source: http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/culture/2013/10/399_144779.html