SEOUL (AFP) — The arrest of a popular South Korean Internet financial pundit sparked a heated debate Friday over how much freedom of speech should be tolerated in cyberspace.
State prosecutors arrested the commentator, identified only as Park, Thursday on charges of spreading "groundless" allegations that the country's currency, the won, was imperilled.
Park, who uses the alias Minerva, has caused ructions over the past few months with more than 200 postings about the country's financial woes and the global economic crisis.
Hong Jun-Pyo, parliamentary leader of the ruling Grand National Party, accused Minverva of "maliciously" distorting the facts while rights campaigners rallied behind the pundit.
"This is seriously infringing upon freedom of speech. The government should immediately stop its move to gag the people," said the Council for Public Welfare and Democracy, a civil liberties group.
"This may be the first case of restricting freedom of expression in the name of banning groundless Internet rumours," Koh Young-Chul, a Jeju National University professor, told Yonhap news agency.
"This is a typical case showing our democracy going backward," opposition legislators said in a statement.
Minerva was rumoured to be a retired financial market worker with a foreign degree.
But prosecutors said he was in fact a jobless man whose knowledge of foreign exchange markets was acquired entirely through self-education after graduating from a two-year engineering course.
On Friday a court in Seoul was reviewing a request from prosecutors to bring charges against him.
Lee Jong-Gul, an opposition legislator who met Park Friday, told reporters the pundit rejected the charges.
"I have tried to spread correct information and opinions so that investors can avoid losses," Park was quoted as saying.
Lee said Minerva used his personal computer at home in Seoul and had never been involved in stock trading.
Minerva drew a large Internet audience with postings that accurately predicted the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September, the won's sharp depreciation and the local stock market crash.
His writings irritated authorities with their sharp criticism of the government's economic policy and its intervention in the foreign exchange market.
On December 29, Minerva said the government had forced key financial institutions and exporters to stop buying dollars, in order to prop up the won. The government issued an angry denial.
South Korea has tightened regulations to punish Internet users who write false posts or are guilty of cyber defamation.
Those who spread false reports or stories on the Internet can be sentenced to five years in prison or a fine of 50 million won (37,594 dollars).
In November last year police arrested 11 people for spreading malicious rumours on the Internet in a crackdown sparked by the suicide of an actress who came under cyber-attack.
Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved. More »
