Tag Archives: China

Law trying to be passed to force linking identity to all online comments

Posted by on January 21, 2009 1 comment

onlineidentity

Source: Koreality

I read an article recently about how China has plans to force all gamers to provide their real names “in order to prevent over-gaming.”  When I heard that I wasn’t surprised given that China is a communist nation where privacy is something given and taken everyday.

What I was suprised is that the current administration in Korea is trying to force all netziens (internet users) to register with their real name on ANY comment site and register on ANY site that has more than 100,000 users (rather than the current 300,000).  Sites will also be required to have a system to delete comments that receive complaints within 24 hours.

The reason used to enact a policy like this include an apparently huge problem of “Internet bullying” and prevention of cyber-terrorism.  A recent celebrity suicide is blamed on Internet bullying and many other people have fallen victom recently which has brought this issue to light.

This brings up the question again of what is freedom and what freedoms should we be entitles to.  A system like this can be very dangerous because of how open it inherently is.  What exactly is a “malicious post” and how do they determine if they should delete it?

One problem that I have run into is that many Korean websites require users to input their citizen id (probably to comply with the policy listed above).  Well, that becomes a problem for a foreigner like me who doesn’t have one.  Do you know how many American websites force you to use your social security number?  That’d be a big zero.  I have been able to sign up for the big ones, like Cyworld and NateOn, which have systems for foreigners but the problem still exists.  I’ve read other articles about how this problem is trying to be fixed, but with policies like this I can only imagine it’ll get worse before it gets better for us.

What an Expat Manager Really Needs to Know about Korean History (MBIK 1)

Posted by on January 6, 2009 No comments

 

I’m just going to make some notes and observations that I find interesting as I read each chapter of Mastering Business in Korean, so don’t expect an exhaustive review.

The first chapter is a brief history of Korea that the author says Koreans might expect people to know about and would help with their relations.

I had always assumed 한글 was adopted right from the get go. I guess 한글 was loathed for a while. It says the educated people disregarded 한글 because “even the women could learn it.” I remember seeing how women couldn’t go to school in the drama, 대장금, so I guess that was an accurate portrayal. The author states that 한글 became widely adopted once the bible was translated by Christian missionaries in the late 19th century.

Another interesting fact was that Pyongyang (current capital of North Korea) was seen as the Christian capital of Korea and Seoul (current capital of South Korea) was the hot spot for debate between the left and the right, so the U.S. and Soviet Russia seemed to have the wrong halves of Korea after World War II.

One thing that seems a little backwards in retrospect is that the U.S. forces tried to keep South Korea’s army very small prior to the Korean war. They felt their job was to stop South Korea from trying to invade the north. This is similar to their policy in Japan, though South Korea was in more danger of being invaded. Of course, Soviet Russia helped North Korea build up invasion forces during this time. Wow, smart move on our part ;) . I have to wonder how much intelligence we compiled together at the time and if we knew that Soviet Russia was building up the North Korean forces.

North Korea’s history doesn’t have much to say about the 500,000 Chinese that died to push the U.S. forces back down to Seoul (which later retreated to the 38th parallel). I’d say that’s in line with their policy of trying to show how independent they are from other nations and how much Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il are gods on Earth.

Go to the next chapter, Korean Hearts and Minds: Traditional Yet Changing or select a chapter.