A Korean seven year old, fighting to open space for civil society

By FN for APCNews DHAKA, Bangladesh,

Jinbonet, APC’s member in Korea, is seven years old. Last year, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions was one of the biggest groups they provided hosting to. In a country which has one of the best internet infrastructures – technically speaking – in the world, concern over the rights of citizens in cyberspace are strong. This article looks at some of the recent issues emerging in East Asia.


Jinbonet is APC’s member in Korea, and a network that provides ICT services (webhosting, mailing list, webmail) to that country’s progressive movement, civil society and workers unions.


Its other main activity is ICT and human rights advocacy in the information age. This is especially strong when in comes to issues such as free speech, privacy and the copyleft movement.


"Jinbonet is seven years old. Its history is very interesting," says Kim Jeong Woo aka PatchA (30), the group’s ICT policy coordinator, in a chat with APCNews during a consultation in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in April 2006.


In 1997, in Korea, there was an international labour media conference in Seoul. There, participants discussed the importance of independent networks for progressive communication in Korea.


The people who got involved in the Korean progressive movement – including labour unions and civil society organisations – discussed how to organise this kind of independent media.


This was followed by groundwork for one year. In 1998, Jinbonet was originally launched. ‘Jinbo’ means progressive, says PatchA. It currently has eight full-time activists, and some volunteers. PatchA is a full-timer at Jinbonet, and his work focuses on ICT and human rights policy.


On its Linux-Apache-MySQL-PhP (LAMP) servers, Jinbonet provides hosting services for 600 civil society organisations. This includes farmers’ groups, civil movements, unionists, the women’s movement, and human rights campaigners, among others.


Last year, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions was one of the biggest groups they provided hosting to. From this, they earn hosting fees.


Why would groups prefer to be hosted with Jinbonet, when there are so many different internet service providers (ISPs) out there?


Explains PatchA: "Before the cyber age, there were telephone-line based bulletin-board services (bbs), provided by commercially-serviced telecommunication companies such as Naunuri, Hitel and Chollian. At that time, many cases were observed in which contents were deleted to comply on government’s requests. Many Koreans organised a struggle group on how to respond to such a challenge and to stop government censorship, or surveillance on their communications."


In Korea, there’s quite some concern about human rights, and the issue of freedom of expression. "It’s growing. And people concerned about this would like to maintain a system that’s independent from government (or business). Jinbonet plays a role for that purpose," says PatchA.


"In the internet age, the government tries to control internet content and websites. We have worked on procedures to develop some policy on how to protect civil society’s expression, communication and anonymity. We are now providing a human rights-friendly system," says PatchA.


For example, to protect the anonymity and privacy of its clients, Jinbonet does not leave an IP address or a log file.


Many times, the government and police station request help in tracking an IP address for their investigation. But, Jinbonet, which believes IP address tracking can infringe people’s privacy, turns down such official requests. "Commercial services usually provide that kind of sensitive information to the police," says PatchA.


"We also provide RSS and blog services, as well as trackbacks. Usenet however is not popular in Korea," says he.


How does he see ICTs helping the broader movements in South Korea?


Says PatchA: "Civil society organisations, or most of them, have their own websites to communicate or announce their news to the public. Infrastructure available provides the possibility to communicate very easily. But in Korea, the strategy of how civil society should use the internet in a more practical (and effective) way is not being worked out very efficiently."


He sees civil society organisation solutions as being "centralised, sometimes isolated, and not outreach-oriented".


"These days there has been an introduction of Web 2.0 trials, and we are now discussing how to develop the communication strategy. Maybe deploying wikis, blogs, RSS," says PatchA, who studied Chinese philosophy for his major in university, and has been using computers since the age of 12.


On the content front, what’s the situation like in South Korea?


"We are producing a lot of content in Korean. But the issue is how to make our content reachable for the common people. In Korea, the people use portal sites as their communication tool. Portal sites tend to be giant sized, and a lot of content is gathered in the portal. So sometimes, these tend to ignore the voice of smaller groups and women. There are portals like daum.com and naver.com," he adds.


What are the strengths of Korean civil society groups in using the net?


"In the Korean context, using the network is just commonplace, because of the easy availability of high technology and the high levels of infrastructure. But what’s more important is what your strategy for using the internet is," he adds.


So what are the barriers? Language, obviously, is the first.


"Koreans have a difficulty to imbibe an international mindset. Korean civil society organisations think that international solidarity is very important, in the age of globalisation, specially the struggle against neo-liberalisation, the WTO-attack or the FTA-attack [1]. International solidarity is one of the most important strategies. But in Korea it is difficult to use ICT for international solidarity because of the language problem," says PatchA wistfully.


1 FTA stands for free trade agreement.


South Korea’s anti-WTO movement is very strong. Koreans have actively participated in the blocking the WTO meeting, and participated in Cancun in 2003 and Hong Kong in 2005, says PatchA, who of course doesn’t have a first hand experience of his country’s military dictatorships, that dominated from the 1960s to the 1980s. "I was born in 1977, so I don’t recall that. But there was a huge revolution in 1987," he adds.


What are the major issues emerging in his part of the globe?


Only in March this year, the South Korean and US government officially announced that they would start negotiate a free trade agreement (FTA). Says PatchA: "It’s one of the hottest issues in Korea, and Jinbonet got involved in the struggle committee against the FTA on the issue of intellectual property rights."


The Internet Realname System (IRS) legislation was passed in 2004. This system was enforced for the first time in May 2006, during the national election period which stretched from May 18 to 30, PatchA says.


"Under the IRS legislation, internet media and websites are required to install an Internet Realname System on their bulletin boards or comment board, to certificate the actual identity of the person posting the comments is revealed.


After the passing of the law, Jinbonet took on a lawsuit, challenging it as unconstitutional. "We are now waiting. It’s in the constitutional court. They have not yet started hearings. So we are asking the court to start the hearings soon," says PatchA.


Recently, in April 2006 itself, there was an important press conference in front of parliament, he informs. About 150 civil organisations, internet media and human rights groups joined this press conference against the IRS. They requested that the government abolish it as soon as possible. In mid-April, Jinbonet also petitioned the Korean National Human Rights Commission.


These attacks on privacy always cause a conflict between people’s and the authorities’ rights. In Korea as elsewhere, the characteristics of the internet is that people can copy and paste and send information across cyberspace very easily and quickly. "But laws such as copyright and IPR is to block these very things. So there’s an inbuilt, characteristics conflict. There is no solution. Not yet," he adds.


Korea has an unusual situation in terms of internet access. Out of its population of 50 million, broadband registrations have touched some 11 million, and in all there are 30 million internet users. "Over 70% of the population uses the internet," notes PatchA.


Already in Korea there’s high-level technology introduced like internet protocol TV (IPTV) and other internet business services, including e-learning.


"ICTs in Korea have touched a technical high level. But, in terms of policies for the people, it’s at a very low level. Specially the perception of human rights. This is probably because the government- and market-driven ICT sector is not focussed on people’s needs. It faces a number of challenges in terms of the violation of human rights -censorship, surveillance, and strong protection of copyright," concludes PatchA.


Photo:


Photo of PatchA taken by Frederick Noronha, Asia ICT policy meet, April 2006

Author: —- (FN for APCNews)
Contact: fn@apc.org
Source: APCNews
Date: 07/10/2006
Location: DHAKA, Bangladesh
Category: Democracy & ICTs


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