Does Korea have enough Internet freedom?

South Koreans often point out that they have one of most the Internet-connected societies in the world. More contentious is just how free the country’s Internet users are to use it as they choose. Korea made Reporters Without Borders’ “Enemies of the Internet” list for a fourth straight year on March 12, alongside the likes of Sri Lanka, Tunisia, Eritrea and the United Arab Emirates as a country “under surveillance,” the category before “enemy.”

The report noted that removal-of-content requests by the president-appointed, nine-member Korea Communications Standards Commission have soared since its establishment in 2008. Such requests to Internet service providers, backed by the threat of fines for noncompliance, rose from about 1,500 annually before 2009 to 80,449 in 2010. Reasons for removal included content being deemed defamatory, obscene, or damaging to national security. Park Kyung-shin, a commissioner as well as critic of the KCSC, paints a grim picture of Internet censorship in one of Asia’s most vibrant democracies.