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Sweden's Watergate
An anonymous reader writes, "Sweden's ruling Social Democratic Party's internal network has been illegally accessed several hundred times over a period of several months. Party treasurer Tommy Ohlstroem describes the incident as "wide-scale and systematic." Computer security company Sentor's investigation has revealed intrusions originating from computers belonging to Sweden's Liberal Party, and with the upcoming election in only two weeks many commentators are already describing this as Sweden's Watergate (Swedish only). An employee of the Young Liberals has admitted to unauthorized access, but a series of mysterious coincidences in the form of exceptionally well timed public announcements by the Liberal Party suggests the involvement of more than one person."
saying 'Liberal' in Sweden is not the same as saying 'liberal' in the USA. Of the two major Swedish political parties, the liberals are the more right leaning. In the US however, both swedish parties however would be generally considered to be left of the Democrats.
(Generally, I don't find terms like 'left' or 'right' helpful for a serious political discussion, but it will do for slashdot)
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
...ever since ABBA won the Eurovision contest.
He had the same username as password:)
Hm... The mind boggles, just mental think of the Watergate scandal being pulled of by a bunch of blondes.
Might have great potential for a comedy skit.
Bob Woodward was seen headed for Sweden.
... over here, not members of opposing parties are opening the respective other boxes, but email is illegaly read by members of the own conservative party CDU without consent... See http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/77680 for further information (or Googlelated)
Screw the FSM - Real geeks believe in the Invisible Pink Unicorn
Just before 2006's Hungarian Parliamentary Election, the Hungarian Socialist Party accused the Alliance of Young Democrats with accessing the private server of theirs. The "proof" was a screenshot from a Win2003 server log showing the host belonging to the party. The accused party countered by showing proof that their internal site was systematically accessed by the other party, also showing logs.
The internal server of the Socialist Party turned out to be a password protected http server containing some upcoming promotional campaign pictures, with some trivial password like hsp:redflower. The pass somehow leaked and thousands of other people viewed it, myself included, before it became a "scandal" and "proof of hacking" and "ServerGate".
I hope the swedish parties are more grown up than to play stupid games like that and I hope the swedish public is more educated than the hungarian, so that they can tell if nothing extraordinarily happened, just some PR hype..
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
What we have here is just regular old fashoned political dirty tricks and oneupmanship. Watergate was about a paranoid president with a list of enemies who he was willing to use the state's power to crush. The corruption started at the top. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate_scandal
Of course people didn't learn. We had the Iran-Contra affair a little later under Regan. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-Contra_Affair
I can't believe that Sweden has stooped quite as low.
I hope you're not suggesting that it is legal to enter as long as the password is a simple one?
1, 84 times not hundred of times.
2. If was done by ONE member of the LUF - not the Liberal Party - LUF is the youth organisations associated with the Liberal Party.
3. He did it by trying to login using the same password as the username and other simple methods - and cracked 3 accounts. Socialist party had not a very secure system.
4. The journalist claims ha was approached by a member of the liberal party who showed him how to accces the webbsite on a cyber cafe. That member claimed that many within the Liberal party know about it. Even though as far is known only 1(one) person did know about it.
5. The journalist was/is a active member of the Socialist party youth section.
6. The socialist party has know about this break-in for some time.
7. The disclosure was made the same night as the major candidate to take over as prime minister was on TV being questioned - the leader of the Moderate party. (swedish right wing - but more like US democrats)
9. The Socialistic party has before had an politician send emails pretending to be the Moderate party leader to journalists - trying to make it sound like the party leader was an idiot - and the socialist party member got fired in a scandal.
There is an election this month in Sweden. The alleged crime was committed last year and until mars this year but not publicly known until now just before the election.
You take your pick of who has done most to use this to win the election.
Just saying it like it are.
For those of you who don't know this, there's election in two weeks time. :)
It took them 7 months to discover this, and it just happened to find evidence two weeks before election
This sounds like a perfect time for Social Democratic Party to transition their network to OpenBSD. As we all know, OpenBSD offers by far what is the best security for its cost. A properly updated OpenBSD system will often drop the chance of a network intrusion to basically zero.
Various other security mechanisms are provided to help ensure secure a secure system. User passwords, for example, are strenuously checked to make sure that they are of a suitable quality. The stack smashing prevention capabilities of their version of GCC provides protection (in addition to that of hardware-based protection) for stack overflows. They have their own fork of Apache, which has been thoroughly audited for security flaws.
Anybody with sensitive information, especially a political party, needs to be using software that does its best to maximize their system security. Thankfully, OpenBSD makes that perfectly possible, at a very affordable price. It's no doubt that a donation from such a political party, were it to use the software, would lead to further improvements of the already superb quality of the security of OpenBSD.
yeah except that in the case "liberals" are the most right-wing, they'd be equivalent to US' GOP, except that Sweden's politics (and all of Europe's politics in fact) have a gravity center much farther "left" than the US'.
Oh wait, maybe that was your point?
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
Hooray!
Monstar L
I saw this thread's title "Sweden's Watergate" right after reading "Debian Kicks Jörg Schilling"; so I naturally assumed it was a dupe.
#DeleteChrome
Of course not. But the order of the offense is even below viewing a porn site with borrowed passwords, on the level of viewing a link to a misconfigured site showing not-to-be-public-but-still-out-there material.
It is not a hack attack and most certainly not a -gate scandal.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
The largest party in sweden would be the social democrats, the second largest party are Moderaterna, the liberal party would be the third largest. And your placement of the parties on an american left-right-scale is not entirely true either.
:)
- Social Democrates, pragmatic power party with an emphasis on a large welfare state and a regulated labour market.
- Moderates, previously somewhat conservative that now have triangulated the social democrates more or less totally.
- Peoples Party - Liberals, Social-liberal party that now could be placed to the right of the moderates.
Since there are seven major parties in sweden instead of two large coalitions like in the United States I find it hard to compare them to either the democrats or the republicans. For example it is hard to find any great amount protectionism in any of the parties platforms, but all favour a welfare state with socialized medicine for example. So you are over-simplifying things a bit too much!
I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
it was probably a møøse!
I'm a rabbit startled by the headlights of life
Seriously, this is not that big of a deal. Not that many people in Sweden cares. One of the major newspaper did a survey and over 70% of the people said they either did not care or that it didn't change what they would vote for.
This sounds more like insider trading . . . Using timely insider knowledge to gain an advantage in the (political) marketplace. Just because the password is dictionary, doesn't make it legal.
According to the news:
"The password was the same as the username.. and the password was [removed by me]."
Sometimes one wounders why they broadcast these things.
The password has probely been changed already, but anyhow.
Last week they showed how to open a normal door lock, and said what the tool was called and that all information could be found on the net.. took me 5minutes to find a PDF describing how to breakin to maybe 75% of all locks we got here..
Door lock security might be one thing, but when they broadcast how to break into them on public TV.. And releave passwords on national TV... Then I as an IT Administrator realy wonder, if my lusers will ever learn not to install spywares on thier laptops as work.. Oh my god.
> yeah except that in the case "liberals" are the most right-wing, they'd be equivalent to US'
;-)
> GOP, except that Sweden's politics (and all of Europe's politics in fact) have a gravity
> center much farther "left" than the US'.
In USA, anything to the left of Atila the Hun is a raving liberal
http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=1042&a=52 4163&previousRenderType=6
(Swedish)
Translated loosely:
In October the unemployed single mother "Alice" sent a tearfilled mail to several journalists at Today's News.
The sender claims to be an unemployed, ill single mother who is despairing over the Moderates' suggestion to lower the unemployment benefit.
She also describes a female friend 'whom I got to know at the employment agency was crying the other day and wondered if life was worth living if she receives more kicks like this in the future', and offered to be in a feature interview.
- How can Reinfeld be so heartless? wondered "Alice".
According to the newspaper the same IP address has also been used by "the freelance journalist Erik Persson who claims that Swedish journalists are bought out by the moderates, and by "Anna", an 'infuriated Stockholm woman' who accuses the Moderates of dubious polling methods.
Aftonbladet states that the messages have been traced to an IP address at Sveavegen 68 in Stockholm, the Social Democrats' head office.
--
The electronic war has already started. Why play-act surprised that both sides take part?
I also find the timing of this 'discovery' not surprising.
Hee bor shteer, bom bor shteer doo,
A dish-pi-doo.
Bor bor shteer, lum bor shteer doo,
Bork! Bork! Bork!
Shteer!
Sheeba shleeba goo, dish mooga hacken PC. Ung gish libo hacken PC, mish gee looder bouffer ooverfloo. Gee pish der bouffer ooverfloo mish der leety scripty in der shellcode mik joo inken Intel assoumbler. Fish, ung gish leeber scannen porten mooga funky nmap, bish der open port shif lish der foorwoll. Dish skel loder mish der leety scripty, spur gifor der bouffer ooverfloo, ung desh ooger morgen der stackenschmoosher! Ung gesh, mooga dish spur lorger hacken PC!
Sweden is three weeks from a election. It's a time when every newspaper and every TV channel cover the election in some form and where several hundred candidates for various positions make plays for attention every single day. There are currently seven major parties competing for press and at any one time, two of them will most definatly be talking about the same thing. This is normally called a debate or argument or conflicting standpoints or a "talkie" or what-have-you.
The Swedish Liberal party (Folkpartiet) are focusing a very large part of their political campaign towards integration (of immigrants) and school issues. They bring it up every other day, or more often. The Swedish Social Democratic party (Socialdemokraterna) Party are in a defending position and vie for media attention every single day. They don't always discuss school or integration issues, but often enough. To say, as the Dagens Industri ("Industry Today") article does, that it is some sort of conspiracy if the Liberal Party happen to speak on school or integration issues on the same day that the Socialist party do, is an extremely peculiar accusation. If you look for a pattern, you will see that pattern everywhere in nature.
As for the timing of this news release. The Socialist party was informed by Dagens Industri this last Tuesday that the incursions were taking place. Yet the Socialist Party chose to hold public release of this news until yesterday evening, the same evening when Fredrik Reinfelt, leader of the largest party in opposition, the Moderates, was the subject of hearing in public television. Yet more election propaganda, of course, but covered by and questions asked by public service TV journalists.
If you want to talk about coincidences, you might want to look back at the television hearing a few weeks ago when the party Christian Democrat leader was heard in the same show. Before the political analysis of the questions and answers he had given could ever reach the press, the Social Democratic party just happen to "discover" that a (young, again) member of the Christian Democratic party had "spied" on the Social Democratic party. How had she performed this espionage, you ask. Had she hacked the Social Democratic database? Had she broken into the Party headquarters? Or had she perhaps made a single phone call to the Social Democratic election strategy center? Take your pick.
As far as I can smell, there's something fishy about the way information keeps popping out of the Social Democratic headquarters at extremely opportune times. They don't participate in the resulting ruckus, but they do choose when it should be started. Something smells fishy, and it's not my caviar that's doing it.
/ Per
February 17 Minister for Schools and Adult Education Ibrahim Baylan released the report "Ten myths about the Swedish school". The same day Jan Björklund, the Swedish Liberal Party's education spokeman counterattacked, with the report "Ten truths about the school".
According to today's industry willed Baylan placed forward a report about the school during the weekend as gone. Last Saturday the done party leader Lars Leijonborg and Minister for Schools and Adult Education challenging clean Jan Björklund an initiative about order in the school.
Ministers Jens Orback and Mona Sahlin presented last Friday a report "Sweden will at last a stem time country on the integration area". The Swedish Liberal Party came with a reply that same day, in the form of a statement of integration spokeman Mauricio Rojas and two reports writen by the Member of Parliament.
But both party press spokeman Johan Jakobsson and party leader Lars Leijonborg rejects all rumours about the use of internal information in order to plan initiatives in the campaign.
- I have looked the through initiatives and can not find any connections, the is clean chances, says Lars Laijonborg.
He may medhåll of your partisekreterare
- we do test initiatives each day so the is a clean coincidence, orders Johan Jakobsson SvD.se.
Europe, taken at large, is not a place I'd want to live. As you point out, it's just as corrupt as we ever thought of being. Of course there are a lot of countries in Europe and they're all different.
I have a lot of respect for the Swedes. My experience is a bit out of date maybe but I always found them to be honest and fair (and even more boring than Canadians). I would be saddened to think their politicians had stooped as low as Nixon.
Saying "HA HA his password was in the dictionary" doesn't make it ok.
Keith Dawson is the principal of the Technology Front. Here is a little of my background, with links to more.
I work out of my home office at 118-A Hollis Street in Groton, Massachusetts 01450 (map).
Phone number is 978-449-0444.
Maybe that will prevent dupes. ;)
b0rk! b0rk! b0rk!!
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
Have another server that is not connected to the internet. Seriously they aren't that expensive.
Something like this would have serious consequences if it was tried here. The president would resign in disgrace... or at least those responsible would be held accountable. Nope, we got memogate when republicans broke in to democratic computers to read strategy documents.
... in twenty-ish years, the people disgraced and chastened here will -- having nursed the interpretation that they were betrayed by democracy -- worm their way back into power, un-do any reforms that this sparks, and then lead Sweden into a disastrous war of choice under false pretenses lobbed against an isolated tinhorn dictator who was not not complicit in a major terrorist attack on their country. Bonus points if the tinhorn dictator happens to have been immplicated in a bizarre plot to assasinate the Prime Minister's father right after the father himself stepped down from the PM-ship.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
...how is the Pirate Party (www.piratpartiet.se) coming out in the polls recently? Any swedes who could tell us?
Think about it, just one bored and lonely office worker of indiscriminate sex to charm, no messy hacking about that can leave indelible digital traces :D
Warning to the feeble-minded : "Do not attempt this on your bored and lonely office worker of indiscriminate sex"
Thank you for your kind attention, please complete the following form to confirm your intelligence is above average.
http://www.click.here.to.assert/your.intelligence
# ~: no sigs today
Yet another reason to vote for Piratpartiet!
hands up!
CBS News report on Watergate from 1972-06-19.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=I28mQEVJQso
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
Depends on which side I turn to the USA with.
Oh BTW (if anyone still reads) who are liberal-conservatives then?
-------Attila the Late
Sig. under reconstruction.
What's scary isn't that someone now identified managed to enter their internal network containing very sensitive information from the Swedish security police about politican protection, but that said network had a user with maximum privilegies with his password the same as his username... :-p And it was not changed at a minimum for a half year period. The socialist party shouldn't just worry about this now -- at least the liberal youth party has come forward with this and the person is now identified -- but they should rather be worried if anyone with more malicious purposes than peeking into their scheduled political events have got hold of this information with that horrible security. Better start checking the audit logs of the past few years, guys. :-p
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Republican Senate staff cracked into the Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats' mail server, spying on hundreds of memos focusing on the Democrats' strategy to respond to Bush's nominee judges, including Supreme Court Justices. But somehow that hasn't triggered another Watergate in America's Republican Congress.
--
make install -not war
While I haven't seen any recent polls on them specifically, they will almost certainly have no impact whatsoever. To get a seat in parliament, you need atleast 4% of the popular vote (this is to weed out small, very fringe parties, such as nazis and pirates ;) and in the last election, around 5.3 million people voted. 4% of 5.3 million is 212000 votes. They have no chance in hell of getting that many.
Much more interesting are two other tiny parties, FI (feministic initiative) and a party that's called the June-list. The first one was formed as a response to a percieved lack of feministic issues being discussed in the national theatre (I'm a rabid feminist, it's an extremely important issue for me, but unfortunatly, the leaders if FI are, well, insane). The second one, Juni-listan (the June-list), was a party that was formed at the last swedish referendum (whether we should join the European Monatery Union and start using the Euro) as a rabid anti-EU party. Both are now trying to get into the parliament. It will be interesting to see what happens with them, but the Pirate Party has unfortunatly no chance of getting any seats. I mean, even I, a slashdotter who takes the copyright issue seriously, won't vote for them. I'm sorry, but there is too much at stake in this election.
... where is Sweden? :-/
...but there wasn't much about it on the news (As usual.)
1, 84 times not hundred of times.
Wrong. Actually, most news sources says it was 78 times during january, february and march. They also say there were more logins than those 78. Anyway, how would you know the exact amount?
2. If was done by ONE member of the LUF - not the Liberal Party - LUF is the youth organisations associated with the Liberal Party.
Wrong. As of now, two people in LUF has already confessed involvement, and the newspaper Dagens Industri says they'll name another person involved tomorrow, and that she's in the innermost circle of the Liberal Party. And there's more! Several members of the liberal party actually tried to log on with their own names(!)
3. He did it by trying to login using the same password as the username and other simple methods - and cracked 3 accounts. Socialist party had not a very secure system.
Wrong. No claim has been made to an attack like the one describe.
Instead, the local social-democratic department in question uses a wireless network, and a representative said someone probably sniffed it. The Liberal Party claims a member of the social-democratic youth organization gave them the passwords.
Either way, it's true that using passwords like that is insecure. But it's even more true that taking advantage of it like these liberals did is unethical. I'd prefer someone technically-impaired before someone ethically-impaired any day.
4. The journalist claims ha was approached by a member of the liberal party who showed him how to accces the webbsite on a cyber cafe. That member claimed that many within the Liberal party know about it. Even though as far is known only 1(one) person did know about it.
Wrong. See 2. And it isn't a website, it's a FirstClass system.
5. The journalist was/is a active member of the Socialist party youth section.
I admit this is worth mentioning if it is true. I've followed this thing quite closely though and you're the first to claim it. This wouldn't surprise me, but considering the rest of your post consisting mostly of unique claims and biased nonsense, I wouldn't trust you for anything.
6. The socialist party has know about this break-in for some time.
Partly true. They say they've suspected it for some time. They hired an investigator (Sentor) wednesday last week, the investigation was finished sunday afternoon, and they held the press conference a few hours later, at midnight.
7. The disclosure was made the same night as the major candidate to take over as prime minister was on TV being questioned - the leader of the Moderate party. (swedish right wing - but more like US democrats)
True, but pointless. The election is the 17th, not the 7th. If they wanted it to have the biggest possible impact, one would think they'd keep it a secret for more than just a few hours. That way they could've dropped the bomb much closer to the election. Now, it might just as well hurt the social-democratic party, because of exactly the point you're trying to make -- people will think that they're just taking advantage of this to win the election. This is probably why they chose not to "come to any political conclusions from this, but wait for the police investigation to finish". And at least this first day, the only parties to speak out on the matter has been the Liberals and the Conservatives ("Moderates"). The social democrats seem wise enough to shut up and let people think for themselves, for once.
(btw, what happened to 8? you got that one before me?)
9. The Socialistic party has before had an politician send emails pretending to be the Moderate party leader to journalists - trying to make it sound like the party leader was an idiot - and the socialist party member got fired in a scandal.
-1 Off-topic. So what? If you're going to try to change the outcome of the Swedish election
Liberals in Sweden are exactly liberals in US. The difference is that the "left wing" would be left wing extremists and non existing in US.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I mean, even I, a slashdotter who takes the copyright issue seriously, won't vote for them. I'm sorry, but there is too much at stake in this election.
You may not, but I will, so if you think you represent the majority then you might be dreaming in technicolor my friend. I'm not very political, and really don't give a shit about politics unless it concerns me directly in some way. Many of my friends are also not political (hey, they barely even vote) and they all know about the Pirate Party. I've never heard of FI and Juni-listan until now so I doubt they'll make an impact, but just about everyone who owns a computer in Sweden knows about the Pirate Party - thanks to the recent Pirate Bay scandal. Hell, I think many are going to vote on the Pirate Party in protest or just for the fun of it.
I know I would.
Now, I don't have a vote in the national election and can only vote in local elections (i.e. "kommun valet"), but if I had a vote, then Pirate Party would get it because we really need a patent/copyright reform before things get out of hand like in the U.S. In addition to patent/copyright reform, the Pirate Party represents the CowboyNeal option of a Slashdot poll.
I'm not saying I'm right and you're wrong, I'm just saying you might be surprised.
...a Swedish Liberal is more like a Canadian Liberal, which is to say that a Liberal doesn't really have any concrete principles except to say and do whatever might help them achieve and maintain power ;-)
As others have observerd here, politics outside the US is far more complicated than "left and right" (hell, even US politics has more dimension than that, though the fact that only two parties have power simplifies things). Even the Canadian landscape is far different politically and in some ways mirrors the Swedish situation. For those non-Canadian readers:
Canada's federal parliament has 4 official parties, which dont exactly fall evenly on a political left-right spectrum...cynically, they are:
1. The Conservative party currently leads a minority government (largest portion of the commons but still less than 50%). It is also the youngest federal party in Canada (it has only ran in two elections--2004 and 2006). It came into being largely because of a coalition of some disaffected MPs from two now-defunct right-of-centre parties (The Alliance and Progressive-Conservatives/PCs). This un-official coalition ended when the Alliance chose a new leader (the current Prime Minister), and a formal merger was achieved not long after the PCs chose their new leader (now deputy leader of the Conservatives and current Foreign Affairs minister). Because of this heritage, the Conservative party is a fairly mixed-bag of vaguely right-wing principles. The Alliance generally represented the "far right" (equivalent to moderate US Republicans) though in acutality it was an almost evenly-split coalition of populitsts, social conservatives and libertarians. The Progressive-Conservatives (which sounds like an oxymoron to many people) were nominally right-of-centre in that they were socially "progressive" (protect socialised medicine, support gay marriage, strong central government) but economically conservative (scrap costly gun control, support free trade, outlaw deficits...).
Despite PM Harper being described by his critics on the left as "shrub" or "George's puppet" or other such nasty ways, suggesting that he and his party are nothing more than far-right republicans, Harper himself is acually from the libertarian faction of this large "right wing" coalition. Though he is a regular church-goer he is loathe to legislate morality and evasive on subject such as gay marriage (he'd generally prefer to defer such moral decisions to free votes in Parliament). This lets him get out of having to put the coalition in jeopardy by angering the social conservative support base and appeals to the populist demand for more direct democracy.
Disappointingly to most Conservative supporters the party is viewed as the "least bad" of all the parties. Populists want more action on democratic reform and more openness in goverment than we've been getting recently. Social conservatives would like more vocal defence of thier values by their learder and MPs (which would probably scare off most Conservative support realistically). Libertarians are frustrated at pledging support for large government programmes like mandatory universal healthcare. The one thing that truly unites this party is economic conservatism, and it support is not realy solid--it retains its support basically because it has acutally kept most of its election promises. A study was recently done and quite literally it is the first government that has kept more than half its election promises since, like world war II.
2. The Liberal Party is the official opposition though it has held power for most of Canada's history as a nation. It, well, stands for nothing in particular. Ironically the Liberal's are probably best described as "classiclally conservative" as they support (or at least pay lip service to) "traditional Canadian values". These values are not "bic C" Conservative (what we'd call right wing), but it does fall under the definition of a "classic conservative" (which is to day, they advocate the preservation of
From Swedish media it is evident that the Social democrats server was
//Pingo
protected by username/password. In this case one of the persons with
access to sensitive information had choosen password exactly equal to
his username.
In the corporate world this kind of passwords is a big no no and would
be considerd reckless. The Swedish Social Democrats is now making a big
deal out of an allmost criminal negligance by their own people.
Could this be due to their unfavourable opinion polls close to the
election on the 17th this month?
--- Linux or FreeBSD, it's like blondes or brunettes. I like both. ---
> The password was the same as the username...
Not only that. The username was his real name!
Security?
I don't agree with the Pirate Party that much, but I will vote for them in this election anyway. A copyright reform is badly needed, and only the Pirates can make that happend. I am not afraid that they will get too much influence in the national parliament.
Also note that the expression is "brass tacks". Picture an upholstered couch, stripped down to to just the brass tacks.
at the expense of the people who actually work and do things on their own w/o waiting for the govt to spoonfeed them.
FROM Manila to Saigon, Chinatowns are thriving in most East Asian cities. They are the creation of the waves of emigrants from mainland China who have moved all over the region, and shaped it with their energy and entrepeneurial zeal. But Seoul is an East Asian exception - its Chinatown vanished long ago. The reasons tell you something about the peculiar nature of South Korea.
Until the early 1980s, a Chinatown could still be found in and around a district called Myong-dong. All that remains today is the Chinese embassy, a Chinese bookshop and a handful of Chinese restaurants - all but one of them run by Koreans. Even the Chinese bakeries that once thrived in the streets a little farther away at the back of the Seoul Plaza hotel have vanished. Instead Myong-dong now bustles with fashion shops, trendy bars and many other sorts of restaurants. The land the bakeries once stood on now sprouts corporate tower blocks.
What happened? The answer seems to be that, like many a western businessman, the overseas Chinese found South Korea too tough a market to crack. That is a fairly remarkable, if dubious, tribute to South Korea, given the enormous difficulties the overseas Chinese have overcome elsewhere in the region.
Many Chinese claim they were forced out by the Seoul authorities. The metropolitan government announced redevelopment plans in 1973 for part of Chinatown. In some areas, landowners were required to build high-rise buildings, but many Chinese were unable to finance such projects. Some sold out at below market rates and either went to Taiwan, emigrated to America (a large number settled in Los Angeles) or moved to other parts of Seoul.
The Chinese-Koreans, however, were having a tough time long before then. Most arrived in the Korean peninsula from China in the 1940s as farmers, searching for fertile land. When the Communists took over in China, many stayed and acquired Taiwanese passports. By 1950, when the Korean war broke out, some 40,000 Chinese were living in Korea. Many were landowners and had established thriving businesses. By the 1960s, the number in South Korea had risen to about 50,000. Now there are barely 10,000.