[KS] RE: Koreanstudies Digest, Vol 13, Issue 4

[Timothy Savage]

No offense, Frank, but this sounds strikingly like those people who justify 
the suppression of civil liberties under the Patriot Act by saying it's 
better than in place like Iran.  Just because the United States under George 
W. Bush has been moving backwards on civil rights doesn't make another 
country's backsliding any less of a cause for alarm.  For myself, I'm about 
to start a new position analyzing security developments on the Korean 
Peninsula for the International Crisis Group from here in Seoul, and the 
fact that I cannot now access one of the few truly independent sources of 
information about what's happening up North greatly inhibits my work.  Is it 
as bad as Indonesia, where the ICG rep was kicked out for writing things the 
military didn't like?  No, of course not, but I don't think it's 
unreasonable to expect unimpeded access to open source material while living 
in Seoul.

Tim Savage
>
>Dear All:
>
>Interestingly, anyone trying to discuss the truly amazing scale of
>censorship in the United States (in the media, the schools, all the
>institutions) tends to be labeled an outcast, leftist, extremist,
>whatever -- showing how very well this apparatus works. Maybe we
>should not expect Korea with its long period of authoritarian rule
>behind it to be atop of countries like the United States in such
>matters. In Korea at least, I see a healthy and widespread discussion
>about such issues like censorship, something seems at least to be
>moving, people seem to participate, to be engaged -- it doesn't take
>a movie like "Fahrenheit" to get someone to develop a political stand
>at all!
>

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