South Korean Blogger's Arrest Signals Cyber Crackdown
On Dec. 29th, then anonymous blogger “Minerva” wrote incorrectly that the government issued an “emergency order” to financial firms to stop buying U.S. dollars, in a bid to stem the drop of the Korean won. Two weeks later, the South Korean government has arrested “Minerva”, aka Park Dae Sung, for spreading “false information”. The arrest takes down one of South Korea’s most popular financial bloggers – his post can attract up to 100,000 readers, and signals the South Korean government’s increased anxiety over financial mis-information, as well as a desire to impose control in South Korea’s increasingly chaotic online communities.
