South Korea security law is used to silence dissent, critics say

 

Amnesty International branded as 'ludicrous' South Korea's indicting of blogger Park Jung-geun for tweets satirizing the North Korean government.

Kim Myung-soo, a scholar and online bookseller in the South Korean city of Suwon, has battled charges that he “aided the enemy” by selling works from North Korea. (Matt Douma, For The Times / January 6, 2012)

By John M. Glionna, Los Angeles Times


By his own admission, Park Jung-geun has long been an Internet wiseguy, a young photographer and blogger with a cyber chip on his shoulder whose favorite target for satire is the North Korean government.

For months, his Twitter profile picture showed him with a near-empty bottle of whiskey in his hand, standing in front of a red-starred North Korean flag. Using the handle @seouldecadence, the 23-year-old re-tweeted posts fromPyongyang's Twitter account he deemed particularly ridiculous.

But the South Korean government wasn't laughing. Investigators recently searched Park's photo studio, copying computer hard disks and confiscating books and photographs. After five interrogation sessions, Park, a member of the local Socialist Party branch, was arrested last month on suspicion of "praising and supporting an enemy of the state" in violation of South Korea's strict National Security Law.

He was indicted last week, an action that Amnesty International branded "ludicrous."


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