If Google complies, it would mark the first time that the company has required visitors to its sites to enter such information, and it could set a precedent for how Google reacts in other countries when its services clash with local laws.

Gusts of Popular Feeling provides a detailed and  insigtful look at the evolution of the real name system and how it gained traction after someone’s dog took a crap on the subway.

“Books are hardly luxury items. They are one of the most inexpensive means of entertainment that last quite long compared to movies or plays,” said Song Young-ho at Yes 24, a local Internet bookstore that sold more than 25 million books last year. “We expect to do even better this year with our increased discount services.”

“People are, naturally, trying to find answers to the financial crisis and are turning to religion and self-help books for comfort,” said Park Young-joon, the branch manager of Gwanghwamun Kyobo Book Center. “Novels are also popular during the difficult times with many people keen to escape from reality.”

Looks like the recession did what all those mothers out there couldn’t - get their kids to read more.

“I was wakened by the sound of something falling with a thud outside. I went out to see what was going on and found my son dead,” said the mother.

The attorney, identified only as “B,” had filed a complaint with police, claiming that he was insulted by comments the deceased made on B’s posts on the game site, Lineage, in 2007.

Sad, and all over a f—ing video game!

Winter in Korea

As Seoul’s first snow this winter is already turning black, I find myself pondering the quirks of a language I have resolved — again — to learn.

I’m essentially at a very rudimentary level of Korean, which allows for basic communication with a lot of umms and ahhs and jerky hand gestures thrown in for emphasis. But it also allows for some wiggle room out of a particular trait of the Korean language that is part and parcel of the country’s social hierarchy.

A colleague of mine, an American, is at a more advanced level and he often communicates with our Korean co-workers using Korean as opposed to English. Which means that when he addresses those senior to him he has to use honorifics — even with people he may not like or repsect — that nevertheless connote respect and bolster the difference in status. It is not a conversation between equals.

My own broken Korean, on the other hand, allows me to transgress the language’s built in rules of inequality by pleading ignorance. In simply trying to communicate, I may inadvertantly fail to acknowledge a person’s seniority over me. Which, truth be told, suits me fine.

A couple of cases in point.

There’s a few folks I work with who would often comment out of the sides of their mouth that I used ordinary speech, as opposed to honorifics, when speaking to them in Korean. Only later, when they learned that I was actually as old or older than they were, did those comments cease. Still, it used to annoy the hell out of me.

Another instance. There’s a grouchy old man that lives up the block from me. The first time I met him, I was sitting by a nearby stream that runs outside his house with my wife and kid. He stared for about ten or fifteen minutes, then launched into a gruff-sounding personal biography about how he’d been born on that block and all the honors he’d gotten for his extreme nativism.

Now, there are two ways to say “once upon a time” or “back then” in Korean. One translates as “at that time” while the other sounds more like “long ago.” The difference in usage still seems a little subtle to me though, and so I used the latter one. He didn’t like that. His face twisted into this angry scowl as he waved his finger in my face telling me I was still a young punk and how dare I say “long ago” in reference to my own life. Needless to say, it caught me by surprise.

Still, he calmed down and eventually even handed my son an apple from his yard. It was a lesson in the language that I won’t soon forget. Which, tangentially, leads me to the other thoughts that have been bouncing around in my head these past few days.

The first has to do with the seemingly incoherent events that transpire in a country where one is neither a native or native speaker. In a recent conversation with a friend who’se just returned to Korea after an extended abscence, he was curious to know what had happened with the beef protests that had rocked the country last summer and seriously perplexed him. I told him U.S. beef was selling like hotcakes.

More recently is the case of Minerva, the on-line freakonomist who was arrested for spreading $2 billion dollar lies on the Internet. Now, a lot of foreign press coverage I’ve read spins the issue as a simple crackdown on Internet freedom (guilty as charged). But behind all the headlines is basically a big question mark about the hows and whys of this issue. When you don’t understand something, it’s always easier to dismiss it as either stupid or malicious. While it could be both, there’s usually more to it.

A Korean friend who is logical to a fault explained to me that Minerva had become a sort of rallying point for all those who hate the current government. Like U.S. beef, it was less about the issue itself and more about the conduit it provided for netizen’s almost unconscious disgust with the Lee administration. The Internet too has become this sort of platform for political mobilization, though certainly folks are going to be more cautious about their on-line comments.

The other thought has to do with North Korea. I read somewhere that Seoul has just published a dictionary of literary terms used in either one or both of the two Koreas. The 60 year political and cultural divide has led to a growing divergence in the two countries’ languages, as for example their definition of the term modernism: it’s either a progressive cultural and artistic movement or a petit-bourgeois capitalist conspiracy. I’ll leave it to you to figure out which one is which. They also use completely different words for computer and a host of other terms that often require translation.

Now you might think that this proves the two countries are wholly irreconcilable, but actually they’re more alike than one might think. Take for example the news that North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has tapped his third son to be next in line for the communist throne. Nevermind the younger Kim seems to be in as bad health as his pop. South Korea too is lining up to introduce a few new leaders itself. Though not blood related, the political ties are a little incestuous. Except with Samsung, where dynastic succession seems to be the order of the day.

On-line autocracy

South Korean authorities arrested an unemployed man on Wednesday suspected of being the author of a series of online postings critical of the government’s economic policy.

The Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office arrested the 31-year-old identified by his surname Park on Wednesday and is conducting an investigation into whether he is indeed the netizen known as “Minerva.”

Late last year, a series of postings appeared on the country’s largest portal Daum under the alias Minerva, blasting the government for its handling of the then burgeoning economic crisis. Minerva gained widespread fame with his prophetic predictions of the collapse of US giant Lehman Bros. just days before it occurred.

That event triggered a rapid downturn in South Korea’s financial fortunes as the currency and local stock market entered into a dizzying spiral of decline. On Dec. 29, another posting appeared under the name Minerva claiming the government had issued an order to local financial institutions to stop purchasing dollars in an attempt to stabilize the won.

Government officials were quick to deny the rumor, especially after the currency market began to wobble that same day. South Korea’s has been the worst performing of Asia’s currencies since the global economic crisis erupted.

Park is being held on charges that he violated the country’s telecommunication laws by spreading what officals claim are “false facts.” As bloggers have noted, facts in themselves are not false and the government’s own statements on the state of the economy in recent weeks have been as dubious as anything on the Internet.

One comment reads, “So it is now illegal to make economic predictions in Korea? Shouldn’t someone in the current administration be arrested for their economic growth predictions?” Another quotes a Korean coworker, “I’m ashamed of Korea and ashamed to be a Korean.”

According to authorities, Park graduated from a vocational high school and a two-year college in Seoul. He once worked for a local manufacturer and has never left the country, contrary to claims made in one posting under the Minerva alias that the author had done a masters and doctorate degree in the US and had experience on Wall Street.

Officials say Park admits to being the person behind the Minerva postings.

The arrest is the latest in a string of measures by the current administration to tighten its grip on the flow of information in one of the world’s most wired countries.

In December, fists went flying in parliament as opposition lawmakers attempted to prevent the ruling party from unilaterally passing a set of bills that included media deregulation. If passed, the legislation would allow major newspapers to take partial ownership of local broadcasters, further reducing the existence of independent voices in the media.

The rule of President Lee Myung-bak, once known as the “bulldozer” for his years in the construction industry, is looking to many here increasingly like a return to the three decades of military rule that ended some twenty years ago. And ironically, for a president who has taken a firm approach to increasing freedom in North Korea, he seems quite ready to squash it here.

In yesterday’s society section of the online news site Sina.com was a story about a 14-year-old student whose hands had been so severely beaten by her teacher that she couldn’t pick up her chopsticks to eat dinner. The report noted the student had also been forced to do 200 squats by the same teacher for failing to finish a task she had been assigned.

When questioned by the reporter, the teacher initially acknowledged the beating, but then later retracted her statement, saying she had never hit a single child. I read that and wondered what went through her mind that compelled her to make such an abrupt turnabout. Could she be thinking of the young husband whose wife posted images of him and his mistress before plunging herself out of a 24 story building?

The husband in question became the focus of a Web site in China called “Ren Rou,” or human flesh. Visitors to the site can read about the underhanded deeds of unkowing culprits and then proceed to locate and bury these poor saps in an avalanche of online death threats, excrement and even physical abuse. A court recently fined the operator of the human flesh site the equivalent of $420 dollars. A slap on the wrist, if even that, with the court citing the husband’s low morals as a reason for the light penalty.

Reading these articles, I couldn’t help but think about China’s Cultural Revolution years, when gangs of young Mao devotees would roam the streets punishing anyone even remotely suspected or violating the Communist leader’s principles. All were fair game in an environment where settling scores became as important as maintaining moral standards.

Similar events happened here in Korea not long ago, when online rumors and attacks played a role in the suicide of actress Choe Jin-sil. Her death and the part that online forums played in it have driven the government here to push through laws holding portal operators repsonsible for the content that appears on their sites.

In both countries, the Internet has become a vehicle for enforcing a loosely defined but highly volatile set of principles through fear, shame and sometimes violence. It’s an apt title for a Web site that literally devours people whole.

Looking at the numbers it’s no wonder that when the anti-beef protests erupted the Internet and broadcast media played such an enormous role in the whole affair. I’m curious what the numbers would be for newspapers.

It’s just another sign of the growing impact that technology is having on Korean society, from family life and traditions to national politics. While the Internet offers access to a tremendous amount of information, alot of that is taken in sideways as users scroll from one page to the next.

Seoul says – pretty weakly – that it’s going to try and get more books into people’s hands, but somehow I doubt they’re going to come up with a way to counter the momentum, much of it first begun by the government itself as a way to boost the country’s economic growth.

Just as an aside, it’s striking that as broad as the Internet is, it can also help feed into a very narrow outlook, as seen in the anti-China — or anti-Korea — slurs that were flying across the netisphere not long ago.

Korean currency

An article in the Chosun Ilbo raises the issue of Internet based rumors and their effect on Korea, pointing to the recent anti-US beef protests that nearly shut down the country and were fueled by a flood of mis-information over the saftey of US beef.

More recently is the impact such rumors have had on the local economy, drumming up what has come to be called the “September crisis,” a scenario which envisions a repeat of 1997, where foriegn investors flee in droves and the economy goes down the toilet.

According to the article, there is suspicion that foriegn investors and currency speculators are behind the latest rumors, seeking to cash in on a weakened won and slowing economy.

Financial authorities and experts say market players involved in “short selling” — borrowing a security from a broker and then selling it with the intention of repurchasing it later at a lower price to profit from the falling price of a stock — may be behind the rumors. Foreign investors in particular, who have led this practice, are being pointed out as the source of the rumors.

Now I don’t know near enough about economics to get into the details of this subject. What interests me is the immediate impact this has on the country, from top to bottom.

There’s a new president elected on a mandate of fixing the economy, which seems to be tanking. One of President Lee’s campaign promises was a tougher stance against North Korea, long seen as having benefited from Seoul’s largesse.

With attitudes here decidedly negative towards the North, following the shooting of a South Korean tourist in the North’s Mt. Geumgang resort,  the WFP’s calls for food aid from the South to stave off a looming famine in the North may go unheeded.I read recently that the governemt here actually had to request more money just to afford the minimum quota on rice imports to feed itself as grain prices have soared.

Meanwhile, South Korean exports enjoy a boost, but inflation is increasing and more households go into debt. Lee has offered tax cuts, but these have been criticized for mainly helping the wealthy. (Cuts include lowring of inheritance taxes and reductions in property tax – obviously a wide swath of the population.) He’s offered to develop new housing, but I’ve heard this will help drive up land prices, to the joy of his buddies in the construction industry.

Household’s education spending is up, especially for those parents who’se children attend overseas schools, where the weak won can barely keep up with tuition there. For those who can’t afford an education abroad there will be chartered schools opening, though again they will be prohibitively expensive for all but the wealthiest. There’s always the hagwons I suppose.

And to think that all this is the product of rumors!

Korean Confucian Academy

A couple of peices in today’s Korea Times point to the growing impact of Internet technology on Korean society. (Even on the remote Dokdo islets, seven hours by boat from the mainland, broadband has been installed.) The first is on the withdrawl of Sony Pictures from Korea, due to slumping sales caused by the nation’s high rate of broadband Internet acces and p2p downloading.

It is often said that Koreans, regarded as one of the most tech-savvy people in the world, live two or three years ahead of everyone else. However, the movie industry is certainly hoping that the country isn’t representative of the future of film distribution.

I used to shrug at those little clips that appeared before a film asking the audience things like, “You wouldn’t steal a car… piracy is theft!” I have a freind here who works for Sony and just might be out of a job because of this. Very sad.

Sony was the last among major movie studios to grind it out in the difficult Korean market. Paramount, Universal, Buena Vista and 20th Century Fox packed their bags in 2006 and last year.

It really is indicative of how technology is redrawing life here. According to the artcile even once ubiquitous video stores are fast disappearing, replaced by street side vendors selling pre-release DVD’s for pennies on the won.

Even Korea’s traditional Thanksgiving holiday, called Chuseok, is being affected. Once a time for families to return to their rural roots to pay respect to ancestors, many are now simply logging on to send the equivalent of an e-card to their revered predecessors.

As per the article

Last weekend, most highways were jammed with those trying to pay an early visit to their ancestors. But even ‘smarter’ holidaymakers opt out of congestions by using ‘beolcho,’ or (online) grave weeding services.

Similar services exist for food preparations, once a time consuming task for young women who are obliged to prepare a traditional feast as offerings for the departed, is now a simple click of the mouse.

Harkening back to Korea’s Confucian spirit, a folklore professor at the end of the article bemoans the diminishing “sincerity” in these virtual gestures of respect.

The holiday is also a time for families to gather and learn about their roots. The changing trend simply shows materialism and expediency.

In his Analects, Confucius advised China’s rulers that besides food and weapons, in governing one must strive to “make the people sincere.” Perhaps the Internet is Korea’s own 21st century version of the Cultural Revolution.

Park Wang-ja, 53

Today’s Korea Times reports that the shooting death of a South Korean tourist in NK on July 12th has revealed a breakdown in communications between the leaders of the two Koreas. The report noted a direct line between the two leaders set up during the Kim Dae Jung administration in 2000 as part of it’s Sunshine Policy is “no longer in use.”

This explains, in part, why there was such a delayed response by South Korean authorities to the killing. It also reflects the widening gulf between the two sides, a consequence of President Lee Myung Bak’s tougher stance. Reportedly the North is now demanding an apology from the South for the killing.

A quick look at English and Korean blog sites reveals a split between those who favor a tougher stance by the South, and those who lean towards a more conciliatory approach.

One comment on the popular English language blog The Marmot’s Hole questions whether the North would have been more forthcoming with an apology during the liberal Roh administration. “North Korea demands an apology from South, and refuses to cooperate with an investigation. Somehow, I doubt they would have done the same last year when Roh Moo Hyun was in power,” adding in parting a colorful description of Roh’s weak position vis-a-vis Kim Jung Il. 

Another comment on the site ROK Drop puts it bluntly, “there’s a pretty good chance the North Korean bullet that killed the 53-yr old South Korean tourist was paid for by the Sunshine Policy.”

Other’s point to the recent protests in South Korea over the importation of US beef, saying the North is exploiting President Lee’s weakened position here. “The North Koreans probably feel South Korean President Lee Myung-bak is politically weak right now due to the Cows Gone Wild madness, and can get away with their demands with no repercussions.”

Many are also wondering why the response from South Koreans themselves has been so muted, in stark contrast to the anti-US beef protests that nearly shut down the state. Linking it to media coverage, some have criticized the press here for toning down the language in their reporting, referring to the case as an “accident” rather than “murder.”

Korean netizens have been more sympathetic in their take on the shooting. One writes, “Why was the woman walking around the beach at four o’clock in the morning, when all the other tourists were sleeping.” He adds, “I’ve been to the resort and there is clearly a fence marking the restricted zone. The woman was being careless.”

The same blog notes that South Korean women lack any military knowledge because they do not serve in the military as South Korean men do. Many Korean netizens, it reads, are in fact calling on educating women here in basic military training. 

Other posts on Korean sites have gone as far as to blame the US and President Lee for orchestrating the killing, perhaps as a means to divert attention away from the mad-cow scares. A Korea Times report noted a flood of postings from netizens immediately after the killing was announced highly critical of the woman and the South Korean government. 

What comes of all this is a picture of a country divided by forces vying for control over popular sentiment, a battle being waged over the internet where fact and fiction are blended into a volatile mix aimed at influencing policy at all levels. 

“Clearly,” reads one post, “the shooting of the tourist at Mt. Geumgang shows we are still a country at war.”