More Civil Liberties Concerns Over Jailed Korean Blogger

from the freedom-of-speech dept

Mon, Jan 26th 2009 11:12pm — Mike Masnick

We've covered the story of the South Korean blogger who went by the name Minerva, and who was arrested for "spreading false rumors." The whole episode seemed troubling to us. It seemed as though the blogger was just posting his thoughts online, and the government didn't like what he was saying. Now even more information is coming to light, including reports that what he said (about the Korean gov't telling banks not to buy US dollars) wasn't quite as false as the government claimed. Apparently it wasn't an official order -- but banks were urged to avoid dollars. This has plenty of people up in arms over what seems like a clear politically motivated arrest of a guy for telling the truth that the government didn't want people to know about, rather than any sort of "false information."

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Filed Under: blogger, forecasts, free speech, minerva, predictions, south korea, spreading harmful information

5 Comments

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Fred, 27 Jan 2009 @ 5:36am

S. Korean Blogger
Maybe we should let the N Koreans have S. Korea. The South appear to be acting like the North
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Jan 2009 @ 5:45am

Huh, well what do you know. He wasn't just a crazy conspiracy theorist! If the goverment had just a) laughed and called him crazy or b) flat out ignored him... they may have kept this under wraps better.
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Twig, 27 Jan 2009 @ 5:52am

well if they are gonna be like this then i agree they need to go back to there own government. This is their own fault no one elses, they need to take responsibility for their own actions and accept the consequences
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zozobra, 27 Jan 2009 @ 8:43am

this blogger was writing crap everywhere and freedom of expression ends where it's harming other people's rights

slander, libel...

there's nothing wrong with minerva's arrest.
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- atlas drugged, 27 Jan 2009 @ 10:57am
  
  Re:
  Are you joking or just ignorant?
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