[Foundation-l] South Korean Government's regulations on real name for Internet

[Ting Chen]

Hello Cheol,

first of all, we are all very concerned about this issue and we are 
still sorting things out. So more informations especially from you in 
the country would be of great value.

To your question at first: According to the comScore data ( 
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Stu/comScore ) the Korean Wikipedia 
had in February 2009 more than 1.1 million visitors. I suppose most of 
them come from South Korea, so, yes, we have quite certain more than 
100,000 visitors from South Korea.

My understanding about Google and YouTube is that they decided to close 
down their subsidiary in South Korea. There are two things that I don't 
understand at the moment: First, as far as I know companies that are 
based in South Korea or have subsidiaries there have to obey the law. 
But how is it with companies outside of South Korea? Is it in the text 
of the law that website of such companies could be blocked? The second 
thing that I don't quite understand until now is that it seems they had 
submitted the law but have decided not to enforce it. Is that the 
situation at the moment? (This is in so far confusing for me as it says 
that the gouvernment itself doesn't obey or doesn't expect its citizen 
to obey the law of the country, which put the total legal system in 
question.)

A rough translation of the law (or the critical part of it) would be 
helpful for us to judge the situation.

Though the reason for your mail is not happy I am happy that you 
contacted us here. The korean community is until now very very 
underpresented here and the prospect to have a chapter there one day is 
very exciting.

Ting

RYU Cheol wrote:
> I'm not sure what you mean by no business in South Korea.
> The foundation is in Florida, so you don't need to abide by the law of
> United Kingdom?
>
> But I'm an contributing editor of Wikipedia residing in South Korea
> and some of ko.wp editors  are preparing to establish South Korea
> chapter to promote Free Culture Movement. South Korean editors have to
> abide by the regulations of Korean government.
>
>  I want to know if we have visitors more than 100,000 from South Korea or not?
>
> -Cheol
>
> 2009/4/9 Nathan <nawrich at gmail.com>:
>   
>> Assuming it isn't an April Fool's joke, the fact remains that the Wikimedia
>> Foundation is not bound to abide by the laws of South Korea. Google had
>> business there, presumably, while the Foundation does not.
>>
>> Nathan
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-- 
Ting

Ting's Blog: http://wingphilopp.blogspot.com/