The South Korean government asked Google to remove significantly more online content than other developed countries such as the United States and Japan last year.
According to Google Transparency Report, the South Korean government asked it to remove 54,330 items in 2020. This is a lot compared to the United States (9,482), France (5,475), Germany (1,941), and Japan (1,070).
The South Korean government made a total of 2,397 requests to Google to remove the content. This figure is also greater than the number of requests from other developed countries such as France (657), the United States (596), Germany (409), and Japan (185).
The most cited reason for the South Korean government’s requests for removal was privacy and security, which accounted for 43.5 percent of the total. This was followed by regulated goods and services with 39.2 percent and election law with 4.6 percent. Copyright (4.4 percent), defamation (2.5 percent), and obscenity and nudity (2.3 percent) were other reasons for the request.
“There is a high possibility that the executive branch having a right to request removal or correction of information published online could be a violation of the constitution,” Son Jie-won, a lawyer, told the Maeil Business newspaper. “The United Nations has recommended (that the) South Korean government look into the issue, and the reason why it can be a problem is that the government can abuse its right based on its (sole) judgment.”
According to Google, 65 percent of the content requested to be removed by the South Korean government was removed last year. The most common reasons for the relatively low removal percentages were content not found (13,398 items), content already removed (1,135 items), and not enough information (821). The Maeil Business newspaper quoted experts who said that this indicates that the government might have overused its right to ask Google to remove content.
Google Transparency Report also included some of the details of the content and the action it has taken. There were many items related to sexual content that could have privacy and security issues, which show up online continuously. Among the items requested for removal, there were many related to some key issues in the news last year.
“We received 240 requests from the Korea Communication Standards Commission to remove 422 items showing non-consensual explicit imagery of digital sex-crime victims,” the Google report said. “We delisted, removed and/or restricted access to all reported items where content was still available from Google Search, Blogger, Google Photos and Google Drive for violation of each product’s respective Content Policy.”
The report said the company received requests from the Korea Communication Standards Commission for 111 items related to the Nth room case for Google Search and Google Drive between January and May 2020, as well as a further 46 Google Search URLs directly quoting the Nth room between May and June 2020.
The Nth room was a Telegram chat room dedicated to circulating sexually exploitative videos made through blackmailing at least 74 victims, 16 of whom were confirmed to be underage. This was one of the biggest scandals in South Korea last year. Choo Joo-bin, the mastermind of a scheme luring young women into making videos that he sold online through encrypted chat rooms, was sentenced to 40 years in prison.
Google said that it received requests to remove some content related to election law.
“We received 50 requests from the National Election Commission regarding 39 defamatory blog posts in violation of the Public Offices Election Law,” the report said. “We removed 38 identical blog posts from a single blog on the blogspot.kr domain. The blogger subsequently deleted all 38 blog posts from the blog.”
It did not specify the details of the election related items. However, some people in South Korea argued that the legislative election last year was manipulated. Some of the allegations were refuted by the National Election Commission, but there are still many questionable circumstantial pieces of evidence that show a possibility of election fraud that some people argue should be determined in court. They criticized the South Korean judiciary branch for not looking into this issue, even though election-fraud related lawsuits should be dealt with within 180 days of the election.
One of the other items was related to the 1980 Gwangju uprising. South Korean leftists call this a democratization movement, while some conservatives believe that it can be considered to be a riot since civilian protestors illegally obtained weapons from a military warehouse. However, a small number of conservatives in South Korea went further to say there were some 600 North Koreans who were dispatched to help people in Gwangju. Google provided some explanation on this issue, unlike the other requests.
“We received a request from the Korean Communication Standard Commission (KCSC) to remove 100 YouTube videos related to the Gwangju uprising,” the report said. “The videos discuss various theories about the involvement of North Korean troops and speculations about the victims of the 1980 riot in the Gwangju province.”
Google said it removed 85 URLs for violating YouTube’s community guidelines.
One of the key flaws in the argument that North Koreans assisted in the Gwangju uprising was that some of the North Koreans who came to Gwangju in 1980 include well-known defectors such as Hwang Jang-yop, former international secretary of North Korea’s Workers’ Party, and Park Sang-hak, who is under investigation for his leafleting campaigns.
Park was 12 years old at the time. Many defectors and Gwangju citizens who were accused of being North Koreans who came to the city in 1980 filed lawsuits against Jie Man-won, a former military expert. Jie compared photos taken in 1980 in Gwangju and recent photos of people in South Korea and North Korea with a so-called “facial recognition analysis method.” He argued that people such as Hwang and Park were members of a team dispatched from North Korea. South Korean courts concluded multiple times that his analysis does not serve as evidence backing up his argument.
The South Korean government investigated the Gwangju incident six times, both under liberal and conservative administrations, and did not find any evidence that the North Korean government sent agents to incite the uprising.
The United Nations Command, led by the U.S. Army, was located in South Korea back then. Jie’s argument would indicate that the UN Command and the U.S. Army did not know about North Korea infiltrating into South Korea, which was under martial law at that time, and that they have been hiding this fact for 40 years.
There are barely any conservative politicians or media that now agree with this argument. This issue was brought up again ahead of the general election in 2020, and many political commentators blamed it as one of the reasons for the main opposition party’s loss.
Meanwhile, experts are arguing that the South Korean government is abusing its right to request for removal of online content.
Under South Korean law, a person who argues that their rights are violated by information online can ask a provider of information and communications services to take measures to temporarily block access to the information for up to 30 days. Lawyer Son Jie-won said many requests came from well-known figures such as public officials and entrepreneurs, and that they tend to take advantage of the current law and the government’s right to request removal instead of challenging issues legally through the courts.
