South Korean Financial Blogger Faces 18 Months of Prison

eldavojohn writes "A South Korean blogger named Park Dae-sung has been arrested and charged with destabilizing foreign markets by blogging about declining companies. This is the same blogger who predicted the economic downturn that has been experienced the world over. The Korean Times offers more information on the community college graduate and the accusations levied against him." Several readers have also sent in news that Omidreza Mirsayafi, an Iranian blogger arrested and imprisoned for his writings earlier this year, has now died in custody.

South Korea is a tribal democracy

[incognito84]

Anyone who has spent any time in Korea figures this one out pretty quick. Especially if one finds themselves in a legal entanglement. Koreans think Western law is cold, formuliac and overly rational. Korean law often finds it's "reason" in emotional response, a response usually vocalized by the masses or the majority involved in the case.

It is not the same legal process as one would find in the West, where technicalities and Habeas Corpus rein supreme. Someone made a joke about the goverment detaining this particular blogger because he was more intelligent and resourceful than the government, which made the government jealous. That is more true than you know.

Additionally, Korea is the most Confucian country in the world which might add some understanding into why laws aren't always followed in a logical way. This blogger made the government "lose face", to be blunt.

Summary is inaccurate

[physicsphairy]

From the first link "The 31-year-old blogger's crime: falsely reporting that South Korea had barred banks from purchasing U.S. currency" which doesn't seem to describe the claim of "blogging about declining companies" the summary purports.

This also apparently had a real impact on the value of South Korean currency.

I would hope the SK courts don't punish him for making an honest mistake, if that's what this was, but either way it is not about "free speech." They are not punishing him for expressing a view or opinion. They are punishing him for telling a very expensive lie.

Re:Summary is inaccurate

[Dionysus]

From the Washington Post article:

Prosecutors claim that one of his postings is clearly false. The government issued an emergency order Dec. 29, Minerva wrote, urging top banks to stop buying dollars. The government has denied issuing the order, but a number of currency traders have told the South Korean media that the government did urge banks that day to refrain from buying dollars.

Re:Summary is inaccurate

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a South Korean, and I'll clarify.

The blogger (Minerva) claimed that South Korean government issued an "official order" for Korean banks not to purchase USD for a certain (short) period. IIRC, the average exchange rate during that particular day was going to be used in a lot of financial charts, so by gaming the system, many companies would look financially better in documents and the government will boast it to the people.

Turns out that there was no official order. Why create an official document when a phone call would suffice?

And, ladies and gentlemen, in South Korea, this is a felony that will ensure 18 months in prison. Only if he had correctly said "phone calls"! (Well, of course the government would've found yet another even more ridiculous excuse to punish him, so it won't matter much in the end. They are immune to logic. Why follow logic, when you can just throw one bullshit argument and another and still have half of the nation vote for you?)

Re:News from the future

[Daengbo]

Now that Korea doesn't allow anonymous postings (requiring the citizen's ID number to register) and has started a (mostly unregulated) Inter police taskforce, this type of arrest is surely to become more common.

I live in Korea, and my friends and I have been blocked (with required scary Internet police warning) from websites they deemed morally questionable. Right now, these mostly appear to be dating and gay sites, but who knows where it'll go from here. Putting a force in place to watch your people and giving them carte blanche to block whatever they don't like is just inviting trouble.

Two further comments:

1. My alien ID doesn't seem to work with any sites, so I am effectively silenced.
2. This law was passed in response to a celebrity suicide. The Korean govenment chose to protect people from themselves instead of having an intelligent discussion about why suicide isn't an appropriate response to online slander.

Re:News from the future

[Daengbo]

If you read up and know the story, you will find that the government actually did call up the banks and "strongly discourage" them from trading U.S. currency, In effect, he's being tried on a technicality and being railroaded, and the government -- for all intents and purposes -- did what he said they did. I suspect that they are just upset that he knew, and are looking for a way to silence his blog, which routinely reports anti-majority news.

Re:News from the future

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell?

It's a blog. It's up to you as a reader to check facts before making decisions based on what someone writes. But the financial world doesn't seem very good at that. Somehow the word "speculation" comes to my mind...

What do you plan to do when people realize it's impossible to blog without these kinds of things happening and start blogging anonymously (as in "impossible to track down the real identity of the author")? You can't accuse someone of slander... So... Ban the Internet?

Don't mess with freedom of speech.

And by the way... Where is the proof that what he said was slander? What you just said might as well be slander. Go to jail without passing Go, mister.

Re:News from the future

[GreatBunzinni]

The 31-year-old blogger's crime: falsely reporting that South Korea had barred banks from purchasing U.S. currency. The authorities said the blogger, Park Dae-sung, will find out his sentence on April 20 for posting the inaccurate story that prosecutors said undermined the county's credibility

First of all, slander is when people talk about it. When it's being written then it's libel.

Saying that, is it libel when it's the truth? From this washington post article on Park Dae-sung's arrest: [washingtonpost.com]

Prosecutors claim that one of his postings is clearly false. The government issued an emergency order Dec. 29, Minerva wrote, urging top banks to stop buying dollars. The government has denied issuing the order, but a number of currency traders have told the South Korean media that the government did urge banks that day to refrain from buying dollars.

So, care to retract your comment? After all, it's in itself rather... libellous.

Re:Remedial Education needed

[Daengbo]

May I interest you in learning about representative democracy [wikipedia.org]? You'll notice the U.S. is included on that page. Republics and democracies aren't mutually exclusive.

Re:Believe It.

[Uberbah]

Yes, it is. Think Fannie Mae and politicians going "you gotsta lend money to my poor constituents, and I care not if they can repay or no"

I suppose you could say that, if you were a wingnut or a habitual liar, but then I repeat myself.

Federal Reserve Board data show that: [mcclatchydc.com]

* More than 84 percent of the subprime mortgages in 2006 were issued by private lending
* Private firms made nearly 83 percent of the subprime loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers that year.
* Only one of the top 25 subprime lenders in 2006 was directly subject to the housing law that's being lambasted by conservative critics.

Yes, see the above.

No, you're lying. See above.

That is not the governments fault, but on the other hand, that had nothing to do with the current economic crisis.

Astronomical pay has everything to do with the crisis, because you give executives an enormous incentive to take enormous risk. What would you rather do: make a couple million a year with steady growth, or make $25 million a year by taking crazy risks? Even if your company goes up in 4 years, that's $100 million in your pocket.

Re:News from the future

[trytoguess]

This is just speculation on my part, but S. Korea is home to OhMyNews (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohmynews) A major online newspaper who's articles are contributed mostly by it's readers. Think /. only more general, and with actual editing. So on that vein, it doesn't surpise me that blogs are taken more seriously.