South Korean blogger under fire - 12 Feb 09

The South Korean economy has been hit hard by the global downturn, with more than 100,000 losing their jobs in the past month alone.

Now the government is going after internet critics of its handling of the economic crisis.

Al Jazeera's Harry Fawcett reports from Seoul.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• south
• korea
• blogger
• government
• economy
• harry
• fawcett
• aljazeera

[jerkinp]

North Korea and South Korea are two sides of the same coin. lol

[jianenohashi]

The South Korean state has to save free speech by limiting it. Figure that one out.

[dokkiro]

@xxwzaebd  You are a strange cat. I've never heard that before. Where did you get this piece of useless information from? :)

[xxwzaebd]

Nobody listens to Minerva or Agora anymore. The majority conservatives are angry about the mad cow demonstrations 2 years ago since these endangered their business as eatery owners which mainly use US-imported beef. The tensions between employees(espeically knowledge workers) and land/storeowners in Korea have grown to a maximum since.

[xxwzaebd]

The pro-North faction claims the legitimacy of the Goguryo kingdom and claims that NK is its successor. The conservatives however support the past unification by Silla with Chinese help; the centrists are based on the Yi dynasty which enabled their land ownership based society system.

[dokkiro]

@xxwzaebd That's just not true. Kim IS is ChunJu Kim and they are known to be descended from last king of Silla. Their last names changed to hide their Silla origin. That's very common knowledge amongst ChunJu Kims. Even in NKorea.

[xxwzaebd]

Korea's exclusive economy success proved that he was 100% wrong. Still Korea has more freedom of speech than some European countries. Self-learning social science areas such as economics is very harmful. This is one of the reasons while the distribution of books like Das Kapital is strictly regulated here(allowed if there are obvious academic needs-e.g. university professor in economics). Books are more dangerous than illegal machineguns or explosives.

[xxwzaebd]

To some extent,the "war" between Goguryo and Shilla is still going on-progressives support Goguryo as their roots while conservatives support Unified Shilla. This situation puts Korean leaders often into a very difficult situation.

[xxwzaebd]

In Korea,many conservatives are small storeowners or real estate owners while many progressives are IT venturers or daytraders(or work for financial companies). Together with the generation gap, this difference has widened the rift within Korean society which might have ethnical roots dating back to prehistoric times.

[xxwzaebd]

He was not right anyway. Korean economy is the only rapidly growing advanced economy. The problem is that the progressives in Korea rely heavily on the knowledge economy sector(IT,finance-former activists have been active in IT industries) while Korea is world's strongest in high-end manufacturing. Korean economy is fundamentally different from the Anglo-American economy.

[KYUNGILNAM]

because he spreaded unfounded rumors.

[Core2duoMac]

Lee SHIT Bak! keep him as president and we have another north korea!