Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 15, No. 220.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>
Date: Wed, 05 Sep 2001 06:47:34 +0100
From: Brother Anthony <anthony@ccs.sogang.ac.kr>
Subject: [Fwd: PROTEST BLOCKAGE OF GAY INTERNET SITES IN REPUBLIC
OF KOREA]
Willard,
It does seem to me that this message received on the Korean Studies List
addresses a matter of serious concern to us all in terms of the right to
free access and free expression on the Internet.
Brother Anthony
Sogang Univeristy, Seoul, Korea
[For reflection on the kind of thing that follows, I can do no better at
the moment than to point again to Charles Ess and Fay Sudweeks, eds.,
Culture, Technology, Communication: Towards an Intercultural Global Village
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), and to the CATaC
conference series that these worthies oversee, with world-wide
participation. (For the 1998 conference from which the book comes, see
http://www.arch.usyd.edu.au/~fay/catac/, for the 2000 conference see
http://www.it.murdoch.edu.au/~sudweeks/catac00/.) Quite apart (and of
course not at all apart) from the specific human activity addressed below,
it seems obvious to me that communication is a very complex and difficult
matter in the international, multicultural contexts that we now can reach
so easily. Discussion of the problem here, once again, would be most
welcome. --WM]
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>
> EMERGENCY RESPONSE NETWORK
> The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC)
>
> @@@@@@@@@@@ ACTION ALERT! @@@@@@@
>
> REPUBLIC OF KOREA:
>
> BIGOTRY AND CENSORSHIP MASQUERADE AS PROTECTION OF YOUTH:
>
> PROTEST BLOCKAGE OF GAY INTERNET SITES
>
> RIGHT TO FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION
> RIGHT TO FREEDOM FROM DISCRIMINATION
>
> @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ SUMMARY
>
> The Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) of the Republic
> of Korea (South Korea) recently adopted an internet content rating
> system classifying gay and lesbian websites as "harmful media" and
> enforcing their blockage--all under the guise of protecting youth.
>
> The Ministry acted after an April 2001 decision by the Korean
> Information and Communications Ethics Committee (ICEC)--an officially
> independent body with wide censorship powers--which classified
> homosexuality under the category of "obscenity and perversion" in its
> "Criteria for Indecent Internet Sites." Activists in Korea trace the
> roots of this definition to a 1997 law which classifies descriptions
> of "homosexual love" as "harmful to youth." Since the MIC accepted
> this classification in July, access to gay and lesbian websites
> throughout Korea has been effectively blocked.
>
> The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission joins the
> Lesbian and Gay Alliance Against Discrimination in Korea (LGAAD), a
> coalition of over twenty lesbian and gay rights organizations (as
> well as website masters), in calling for URGENT letters of protest to
> end this internet censorship, revise the repressive 1997 law, and
> protect freedom of expression in Korea.
>
[material deleted]
>
> ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
>
> General background information about Internet Censorship and a campaign
> against the internet content rating system in Korea can be found at:
> http://www.freeonline.or.kr/english/index.html
>
> For further information about the Lesbian and Gay Alliance Against
> Discrimination, please see:
> http://www.exzone.com/lgaad
>
> For more information about the mandate of the Information Communication
> Ethics Committee, please refer to:
> http://www.icec.or.kr/e.html
>
> For more information about the Korean Youth Protection Committee, please
> see:
> http://www.youth.go.kr/english
>
> The full text of the Youth Protection Act of 1997 can be found at:
> http://www.youth.go.kr/english/juvenile.html
>
> The standards of the Internet Content Rating Association can be found at:
> http://www.rsac.org
>
> The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) report,
> "Access Denied: The Impact of Internet Filtering Software on the Gay
> and Lesbian Community," can be downloaded at:
> http://www.glaad.org/org/publications/access/index.html?record=185
>
> ###
>
> @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ ABOUT IGLHRC @@@@@@@@
>
> The mission of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights
> Commission (IGLHRC) is to protect and advance the human rights of all
> people and communities subject to discrimination or abuse on the
> basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, or HIV status.
>
> IGLHRC
> 1360 Mission Street, Suite 200
> San Francisco, CA 94103
> USA
> Telephone: 415-255-8680
> Fax: 415-255-8662
> Email: iglhrc@iglhrc.org
> http://www.iglhrc.org
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