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Korea Fighting Pseudonyms on the 'Net
ThreeDayMonk writes "According to the Chosun Ilbo, Korean net firms, pushed by the government, are moving to require message board users to use their real names: 'The current regulation that requires those who post messages on government and public organizations' web sites to use their real names is likely to be expanded soon to private portal sites.' The Japanese version of the page has more information. Apparently, citizen ID numbers will be used to verify identity."
The MMORPG Ragnarok Online uses the Korean citizen ID to keep track of who is who, make people accountable for their actions (e.g. cheating), and also to prove ownership of accounts in the event you need them to do something like tell you your password. For this reason, some of those administrative things are not possible/enforceable on the International server.
What this does do is make the punishment for cheating much more severe--you can't simply establish a new account and start cheating again. But it also means Gravity might punish you when you don't think you deserve it, and in a fairly damaging way as far as the online game experience goes. Unfortunately, Gravity has a somewhat totalitarian stance on things: Regulations. I know people have been punished for complaining on the message boards (which are tied to your user account). Some of those regulations are very annoying to abide by due to the game dynamics, e.g. looting and kill-stealing. Others are extremely open to interpretation. I remember having to constantly watch my mouth because I wasn't sure who I would offend by an offhand comment.
Big Brother is watching. And you will learn to like it.
1961 and 1979.
You need to do a search for "Kwangju", then think about what you so hastily wrote.
Sociologically, Asian communities are much more cohesive than Anglo-Saxons are. They don't want to stand out when they are in a group and are not as willing to take risks when the group is against the risk.
Their reactions are based on what is good for the group. Does the national ID system help out the community? Yes it does on a day to day level by weeding out criminals and terrorists. Americans would look at it like, does this help me out? Nope, it violates me in ways only aliens are supposed to and I get no immediate benefit from it.
Actually in many places, its hard to see why we don't coup against our president. He is taking too much away from the collective good and putting it into the individual hands. I don't agree with this but it is interesting.
Er, Koreans aren't familiar with the concept of free speech. And there's certainly no constitutional guarantee of it. Hard to end something that never started.
Cheers
-b
yeah, just forget for a moment that Americans let the DMCA go without a fight, and the PATRIOT Act allows essentially ANYbody to spend years in jail without a reason, without being charged - basically like China, if you take my meaning - and it's fairly obvious that Yanks don't give a damn about personal freedom.
Why the posturing to the contrary? Your war-mongering presidential cupcake and his oil-hungry compatriots give the lie to anything that you could say.
you're wrong... stop spreading lies. The copper infrastructure was deployed by Korea Telecom, the ILEC of Korea. Multiple CLEC now deploy infrastructure. Dacom and Hanaro are among a few. Where do you get your stupid crap idiot.
I wonder. Anonymous political speech is pointless. Think about it. No, I don't necessarily want my address and telephone number listed next to my letter to the editor, but at the same time I'm not going to pay any creedence to a letter that's signed 'anonymous'.
Of course, I live in a country where unpopular political opinions (which do not advocate violence) may get you spit upon, get you fired, and get you audited by the taxman, but which will not get you thrown into prison for the next decade. Where there serious potential for loss of life, limb and liberty for political speech, I might want to be anonymous as well.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Yes, the entire country wasn't demonstrating, but practically the entire student bodies of many colleges were. 200 people my ass. After Lee, Han-yoel was killed by a tear gas canister, the protests were truly huge and included many non-students. The protests that led to the ouster of Chun, Do-hwan and Roh, Tae-woo involved many tens of thousands of people, with some estimates for the end stage protests approaching 400,000. Do you think the Korean government had 20,000 riot police (probably the best trained in the entire world) assigned to cover down town Seoul to prevent 200 protesters from wrecking havoc?
Bah, just because you only saw tiny demonstrations doesn't prove that large demonstrations never happened in Korea.
There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself
-Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye