alt.hn

6/4/2026 at 11:45:56 PM

South Korean forums will need to scan every images with AI censorship tools

 https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/south-korean-online-communities-will-need-to-scan-every-images-with-ai-censorship-tools/38341

by Cider9986

6/5/2026 at 4:35:19 AM

The problem is that using an AI censorship tool requires purchasing a solution from a specific vendor. And the deadline is effectively less than a month. There’s nothing particularly unusual about this—South Korea especially has many IT zombie companies that sustain themselves through government contracts. In practice, there’s a local CMS structure in place, and Korean programmers, who are generally weak in English, have to rely on that local CMS, which makes them weak in programming as well. (This is why, despite being a country with a high proportion of highly educated people, South Korea has relatively few prominent programmers.)

South Korea was the first country in the world to implement an internet censorship law. There is a historical record of censorship, regardless of which administration—left or right—was in power.

That said, it’s a complicated issue because these censorship systems also tend to create state IT contracts and job opportunities.

To make things more concrete: most local bulletin board systems and forum platforms are heavily tied to a specific commercial CMS. This is not a coincidence — government-affiliated projects often mandate that CMS, and developers here, lacking both English proficiency and exposure to global open-source alternatives, end up locked into its ecosystem. As a result, even basic AI censorship features become dependent on that vendor’s proprietary modules. When a tight deadline (less than a month) forces a purchase, there’s no room to explore better, cheaper, or more transparent options. The structure itself perpetuates vendor lock-in, weak technical capacity, and a cycle of superficial compliance rather than genuine innovation.

by jdw64

6/5/2026 at 5:15:55 AM

This sounds to me like a repeat of what happened with SEED[1]. The recipe is the same: a real problem followed by a hasty (and probably inferior) NIH solution, a single implementation forced down everybody's throats followed by years of technological stagnation.

Hopefully this mandate wouldn't end up being as far reaching as the SEED mandate did (forcing South Korean web to run on older Internet Explorer versions with custom insecure ActiveX controls for everything).

[1] https://archive.is/ermII

by unscaled

6/5/2026 at 5:19:16 AM

My country is always like this. I think it's a problem unique to East Asian countries—following orders obediently. I read the link you shared, and it seems similar.

by jdw64

6/5/2026 at 6:09:11 AM

That's interesting. I didn't know any other country in East Asia that showed this level of restrictive policy that sets up a cascade of problematic tooling and technologies.

Japanese Internet was pretty bad in the 2010s, but this was all self-inflicted done by the private sector. The government had very little do with it. And even then, ActiveX controls were very rare. My main pain point with online banking was ugly sites, back buttons that don't work and passwords limited to 8 or 12 characters "for security reasons". But those problems are not specific to Japanese or Asian banking sites. The only Japan-specific woes I can think of are frequent maintenance windows where most banking functionality is done (mostly eliminated on my bank) and weird 2FA methods like Security Cards (just a paper card with a table of codes for challenges, also completely gone now).

by unscaled

6/5/2026 at 12:24:18 PM

The paper card 2FA seems better than SMS 2FA or an app 2FA if you're relatively sure your physical security is good.

The card shouldn't cost money or could cost 50 yen which would be more than enough to cover printing it.

You're not vulnerable to SMS interception or phone malware. You're also not forced into Google's or Apple's walled gardens.

by iamalizard

6/6/2026 at 2:10:58 AM

There are plenty of TOTP 2FA apps that work across different platforms, open source ones too, it's just a couple dozen LoC for the core functionality.

by -mlv

6/5/2026 at 8:44:59 AM

It makes sense in a way.

Would you rather take your chances as one in one million customers getting his "hunter2" password brute-forced by a dedicated attack or as one of the one million customers totally pwned by a buffer overflow/code injection from the password field?

by avadodin

6/5/2026 at 4:38:03 AM

CMS here not referring to content management system?

by f33d5173

6/5/2026 at 5:05:44 AM

You're right about the CMS. But unlike the Western ecosystem centered around WordPress, South Korea's public and web ecosystem is pathologically dependent on isolated local bulletin board system (BBS)-centric CMS platforms like 'GnuBoard' or 'ZeroBoard/XE.' As a result, when the government mandates censorship modules, it creates vendor lock-in, as those modules are supplied exclusively in the form of plugins for these local CMS platforms

by jdw64

6/5/2026 at 5:42:51 AM

so we don't have many if any of those vBulletin instances on Japanese Web either... That's just normal.

by numpad0

6/5/2026 at 5:58:40 AM

Right. Each country has its own environment dependencies, but instead, global competitiveness weakens. But isn't the Japanese web rather more distinctive in terms of website styles? They have so many hardcore programmers over there

by jdw64

6/5/2026 at 4:41:19 AM

You're right. I need to explain that the bulletin board systems and forum systems are built primarily around a specific CMS. Sorry about that.

by jdw64

6/6/2026 at 2:05:02 AM

No, you need to explain what CMS stands for. Your three consecutive non-answers are making you look like you aren't a real person.

by Noumenon72

6/5/2026 at 5:03:59 AM

Does it stand for Censorship Management System?

by philipov

6/5/2026 at 5:07:34 AM

Our local CMS stands for 'Can't Modify, Sorry'

by jdw64

6/5/2026 at 5:11:53 AM

>The problem is that using an AI censorship tool requires purchasing a solution from a specific vendor.

This smells of corruption.

by DeathArrow

6/5/2026 at 5:33:27 AM

It's essentially a takedown of Korean imageboards and forums where political memes, especially of the current president, is very popular.

They are fully aware that these operators will not be able to afford the hardware and sustain their public squares by requiring a ridiculous ordinance targeting them.

I see GP is downplaying this very fact that its the "norm" in Korea and I can tell you that it's not. Korea has enjoyed free expression through the internet, now posting meme of the Korean president is going to be impossible/illegal for the site operator. This is definitely not normal and the AI narrative is just a convenient excuse.

by zuzululu

6/5/2026 at 11:57:29 AM

You're the one downplaying here. How many other non-Islamic countries where porn is entirely banned with the websites blocked? Doing deep packet inspection by default? (The difficulty of getting around this isn't very relevant)

Besides authoritarian states and the US, how many where the government can read along in the most popular chat app? Can, say, the Belgium government read along with all messages on Whatsapp?

How many where they also know exactly who is sending that message due to mandatory real identity verification? Even if the Belgian government can't read the Whatsapp message content that Belgians send, do they by definition have the person's identity directly linked to the message?

No to all of the above. South Korea is an extreme outlier and this has been the status quo for years. Your focus on the "meme of the president", despite there being little evidence that this is the target, gives away that you're pushing an untrue narrative here. The GP has painted an accurate picture: all the things I mentioned above have been around for more than a decade across both blue and red governments, neither of them meaningfully opposing it.

by deaux

6/5/2026 at 9:46:27 PM

Why not just host them outside of Korea then?

by ErroneousBosh

6/5/2026 at 5:21:56 AM

Korea's tax revenue has increased thanks to the AI boom, so the country is actively promoting AI at the national level, creating pressure that you have to use it or else, and continuously announcing projects with 'AI' attached to them. The problem is that a freelance individual like me has no way to get involved—it's almost entirely a business based on personal connections. Personally, I think if this is successfully operated in Korea down the line, it could be exported to other countries

by jdw64

6/5/2026 at 6:05:13 AM

hmm so which sane country would 'import' this?

by sysguest

6/5/2026 at 6:37:58 AM

No sane country would import what jdw64 is describing.

AI boom, but only the politically loyal can bid, is not only insane, its literally justifying corruption and censorship by forcing people to take out loans from them to buy GPUs to be compliant, which seems to be the crux of what he thinks other countries should follow.

I guess it can make for a cheap kdrama where authoritarians will use GPUs as collateral and force journalists and political into an everlasting debt and call it a "national AI strategy".

by zuzululu

6/5/2026 at 6:26:58 AM

Among all the governments in the world, is there any that is 'in its right mind'?

by jdw64

6/5/2026 at 6:31:18 AM

No

by protocolture

6/5/2026 at 3:00:58 PM

The problem is that it's a fundamentally stupid idea

by ChrisRR

6/5/2026 at 7:29:39 PM

[dead]

by redsocksfan45

6/5/2026 at 4:50:16 AM

Something missing as cultural context is that deepfake, involuntary "porn", and all sorts of abuse of personal image, are a rampant and omnipresent problem in Korea. Many things are great here, but the sexual landscape when it comes to men versus women and kids, is nasty. You can't really apply a Western mindset to this without understanding just how messed up some of that stuff is. So whatever you think of the mechanism, the problem behind it is very real.

I do think a proposal that AI-filters content on small forums is a bit weird, and probably clumsy. But Korea faces a real problem and usually leans toward a bias to action and "just do it". It leads to weird stuff but also to dynamic problem solving. The part I'm trying to preempt here is measuring this against so called "universal" values; these French Revolution/Enlightenment ideas of universal rights aren't really universal, they're one culture's logic, consistent inside its own bubble but exported like it's the default for everyone. I'll say, I do like them. But other self-consistent logics exist, and I think Korea's set is one of them. It's going to sound cliché but it leans on harmony and the group where the Western one leans on the individual. Both produce aberrations, only different ones.

For example, first time I came here I thought it's crazy to have so many speeding cameras and CCTVs everywhere. Years later I didn't so much "got used to it" but I think it's a tradeoff that mostly works and I grew to appreciate it.

Korea prefers lightweight polices (literally friendly looking) with a lot of automated, bulk enforcement, instead of sparse enforcement backed by the occasional armored truck. That's a design choice, not a slide into dystopia.

So all I'm trying to convey is, keep an open mind, and don't apply some supposed "universal" mindset blindly. Critique the mechanism all you want. Just don't do it by treating one culture's values as the yardstick everyone else gets measured by.

Fwiw I think it's a misfire. But I don't think it's a slippery-slide down dystopia. It's just Tuesday.

by AYBABTME

6/5/2026 at 5:55:53 AM

I don't think it's a dystopia. Hanlon's razor still applies. But I beg to differ on your classification of North Korean policies as "lightweight". Korean internet policies usually mandate a very specific technology (like SEED, or apparently this new model now) and weave a web of highly-detailed, Korea-specific regulations that end up creating a monopoly or oligopoly of objectively inferior and highly insecure software.

This is not lightweight. Even the much maligned Online Safety Act in the UK that forced age verification is a far more lightweight policy than what Korea does. It doesn't mandate a specific software or hardware, it doesn't mandate a specific cipher or protocol. Even the list of methods acceptable methods for age verification is explicitly non-exhaustive[1]. And this is the current poster-child of government overreach in the west!

My example of extremely lightweight digital policies (for most things) would be Japan. Vague requirements, non-exhaustive examples, copious exceptions ("you don't have to implement X if it's technologically cumbersome"), everything can be done either manually or in a fully automated way. Is this good? I think Japan is sometimes far too lenient (e.g. on security requirements), but objectively speaking this is lightweight. Korean digital policy is not lightweight by any definition of that word. If not sending tanks to catch every revenge porn distributor is "lightweight" for you that's fine, but which country does that? If we judge a heavyweight policy by its restrictiveness, then there are probably only a handful countries that can compete with Korea.

[1] https://www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/resources/documents/onli...

by unscaled

6/5/2026 at 6:24:33 AM

I wrote "lightweight polices" not policies. The police presents itself as benign looking in a public context. Enforcement of day to day offences is done mechanically by machines. A state trooper doesn't stop you on a speed check with his hand on his gun.

Yes, online policies are wild and not lightweight at all.

by AYBABTME

6/5/2026 at 6:53:52 AM

Ok, I think I misunderstood you. Lightweight policing, not policy. I guess this happens in the US, but in most countries cops wouldn't stop you for a traffic violation with a gun in their hand. In some countries (e.g. the UK) the police aren't even carrying guns. As far as I'm concerned is not lightweight policing but normal policing. The US is the outlier here, not Korea.

by unscaled

6/5/2026 at 6:53:13 PM

(Just FYI, polices is not a noun. The plural of police is police.)

by comex

6/5/2026 at 11:03:10 AM

The scale of deepfakes in Korea is horrifying: https://www.securityhero.io/state-of-deepfakes/#targeted-ind....

And in 2024, someone made a viral map with reports of deepfakes in schools: https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/southkorea/society/20240830/dee....

It's very similar to age verification where there's a genuinely horrible problem that we're getting a terrible solution to by people who seemingly don't understand the internet. And the finger on the monkey's paw curls.

by kmfrk

6/6/2026 at 8:36:29 AM

The production and sale of pornography are illegal in South Korea. The South Korean government also strictly blocks access to pornography distributed from overseas. ISPs have implemented a DPI system similar to China’s to ensure internet censorship and blocking. Ultimately, the production and sharing of amateur pornography in South Korea is effectively being driven by the government, regardless of South Koreans’ moral standards.

by AXEH

6/5/2026 at 5:00:09 AM

I often agree with you to some extent. In Korea, you can't just say there's no problem with revenge porn—that's basically the logic the Korean government uses. But the issue is that the main source of revenge porn actually comes from overseas communities that Koreans use.

Of course, Korea's largest domestic community has had issues with filtering—things like terrorism threats and rape cases have occurred there. But that's because that community (DCinside) is so large. In reality, the incidents that have truly enraged the public started on Twitter (X) and Telegram. So do the key actors behind these problems end up being subject to censorship? No, they don't.

And does censorship actually eliminate the problems you mentioned? Or does it just make things darker and worse?

I myself have a typical East Asian mindset—I believe a certain level of restriction on freedom is necessary. But to be honest, I see this as internet martial law

by jdw64

6/6/2026 at 12:27:14 AM

> It's going to sound cliché but it leans on harmony and the group where the Western one leans on the individual.

I associate "harmony" with voluntary cooperation and joy, not machines preemptively gagging people. A good exercise is to imagine what this would look like transplanted into non-tech terms: it is illegal to operate a bar, restaurant, book shop, art studio, or even to gather in medium-to-large groups of people, without a government assigned censor empowered to listen in and silence people.

Does that still look "harmonious"?

by like_any_other

6/6/2026 at 1:38:49 AM

You are thinking in Western terms. In East Asian Confucian societies, "harmony" means following the rules to keep the social hierarchy in place. Staying quiet and not disrupting the status quo is more important than your sense of personal freedom.

From our Western point of view, it is very much not voluntary and joyful.

by pezezin

6/5/2026 at 3:28:02 AM

No traditional media talk about this as much as it should be. No one seems to care but the always-angry, chronically online. I had no high hopes for free internet in this country but it's getting worse than I've ever imagined.

by shlewis

6/5/2026 at 5:17:59 AM

[flagged]

by SidewaysView

6/5/2026 at 5:34:54 AM

Korea has a very large femcel crowd and this will impact their misandric expressions as well.

by zuzululu

6/6/2026 at 7:58:40 AM

They have a ton of horrible citizens that happen to be male, so it’s not really surprising they don’t like the men.

by hhh

6/5/2026 at 2:22:35 AM

Forcing CUDA and guiding for Ubuntu 18.04 (FYI, EOS was 2023). Do they really think single Quadro GPU server can handle heavy traffics in real-time?

by donkeylazy456

6/5/2026 at 2:50:31 AM

It’s insane to mandate the specific vendor used. This reads like a backroom deal was reached. Or gross incompetence.

by iamnothere

6/5/2026 at 5:28:27 AM

They are fully aware that website operators of popular discussion forums cannot afford it. This is effectively a mass censorship/takedown of Korea's remaining corners of free speech.

Imagine if a subreddit had to shut down because they have to now purchase expensive hardware just to vet each image shared.

These forums are popular with the young who share meme images of the current president of Korea and this new ordinance would immediately put an end to that.

by zuzululu

6/5/2026 at 4:06:01 AM

Gross not giving a damn

by greenavocado

6/5/2026 at 3:54:21 AM

The future is self hosted private invite only communities of vetted real life humans, likely done in person.

by october8140

6/5/2026 at 4:30:56 AM

That's pretty much the present today. Tbh I'm fine with the public internet just dying off at this point and people going back to their local smaller scale groups.

by Gigachad

6/5/2026 at 12:02:53 PM

I'd prefer the 2011/2012 era before mass moderation was possible and before people began policing for "toxicity". We still had the culture and vestiges of freedom of the old web, alongside with the network effect of millions of "normal" people joining in the conversation through their iphones

by mx7zysuj4xew

6/5/2026 at 12:51:41 PM

That’s pre-SOPA, pre-Snowden, when the internet could still organize to fight (and win) political battles. There’s a reason the internet has become a battleground since then.

by iamnothere

6/5/2026 at 4:32:20 AM

[dead]

by cindyllm

6/5/2026 at 7:13:05 AM

no, its public federated social media running on at protocol. no big tech control, no crypto bullshit like nostr, no way for bad admins to delete your posts like mastodon (they can only ban you from their own server). you can build a web of trust or vetting system on top of that like what tangled is doing for code.

by tancop

6/5/2026 at 4:01:50 AM

And when you need longer reach than that?

A “I vouch for this person” system?

by SV_BubbleTime

6/5/2026 at 4:30:50 AM

That has largely worked for private trackers.

by Pay08

6/5/2026 at 5:38:57 AM

lobste.rs has a pretty decent system with a global invite tree, where users can provide access for other people. it comes with the benefit of creating an association graph of accounts that allows for swift moderation, and lets the userbase grow within a community of people likely to appreciate the culture.

by shit_game

6/5/2026 at 6:47:23 AM

Looks like South Korea is taking a page out of its northern neighbour's book.

Will this impact software exported out of Korea? I can't imagine Samsung will gain any popularity if their phones come prepackaged with AI censorship tools. It massively backfired when Apple planned to do it on iPhones.

by jeroenhd

6/5/2026 at 7:31:56 PM

My Samsung has "Galaxy AI" all over it, it's just an S23.

I've tried to use it out of curiosity and it rejects a lot of my image edits as inappropriate (violence) so the foundation is set.

by suburban_strike

6/6/2026 at 3:23:44 AM

It’s just funny that I get to know about this sort of Korean policies in HN not from main media (I live in Korea).

I had a few chances to apply for government grants in a startup. There is a lot of blind money for new techs but people managing it are simply not competent enough to understand them. Also, like some comments mentioned, tech infra around their management system is often old and very insecure.

by sbinnee

6/5/2026 at 4:17:07 AM

Korea is backwards in technology in every possible way.

- For the longest time, you needed a windows computer to access any sort of government or banking service, and it's still the case for most services

- Because of the reliance on crappy windows laptops, you see everyone who uses a laptop carries an external mouse around to places like coffee shops (bc their trackpads suck)

- the de-facto document format are crappy hancom formats

- watching korean news is farcical - every time they cut to public footage, literally 80% of the frame is blurred. I see no point in even watching the news.

- APIs and API documentation for stuff is sooooo poorly designed/written. Like, it's a f-ing joke.

- External map providers were iced out of hte market until this past year

- You need a phone number to sign up for literally anything.

There are so many more examples but these are just the ones off the top of my head. There is not an inch of breathing room for dynamism.

Koreas issues arent political. This is what happens in pure oligopolies. People on twitter love to fantasize about Korea being so technofuturistic but the truth is that the startup culture is terrible, there's no venture capital scene, and the big companies write all the rules

by prodigycorp

6/5/2026 at 5:20:41 AM

> - External map providers were iced out of hte market until this past year

Foreign internet content companies (like Twitch) got iced out a few years ago too due to “sending party pay” fees imposed by ISPs.

by dogwalker5000

6/5/2026 at 4:47:06 AM

You're right. This stems from the characteristics of a small country. In fact, in Korea, Twitter (X) is looked down upon as something only crazy people use, and its image is not good.

But the overall situation you described is basically a combination of a chaebol-centered, family-run system of national governance, layered on top of large corporate oligarchy. Within that structure, the problem becomes one of survival through vendor contracts rather than aggressive investment—that's the real issue.

I personally hate this culture, which is why I'm trying to get a job in the U.S. Working 84 hours a week for three months and making less than 8 million won is exhausting.

by jdw64

6/5/2026 at 5:23:34 AM

> In fact, in Korea, Twitter (X) is looked down upon as something only crazy people use, and its image is not good.

It's basically the same in many areas of the US. Social media use is very regional due to network effects.

by t-3

6/5/2026 at 5:30:03 AM

Oh, really? That's interesting. I suppose that makes sense, since in the U.S., a single state is often larger than all of South Korea. Thanks for the good conversation. Sometimes the world is surprising in ways like this

by jdw64

6/6/2026 at 3:05:25 AM

Even within a single state and area of the US there are often many different groups living in completely different ways almost unaware of each other.

by Glyptodon

6/5/2026 at 11:25:39 AM

> Twitter (X) is looked down upon as something only crazy people

I think it has been the case globally since Elon Musk converted it into a neo-nazi propaganda platform.

by prmoustache

6/6/2026 at 3:03:00 AM

I thought people fantasized about choebol revenge stories and romance... Never realized Korea had any kind of "futuristic" reputation.

by Glyptodon

6/5/2026 at 4:25:34 AM

> the de-facto document format are crappy hancom formats

What's hancom?

by Pay08

6/5/2026 at 4:28:05 AM

Awful Korean-developed MS Office clone.

edit: for more context, it was initially adopted because it had better support for Korean language features, but now it serves basically no purpose other than be a pain in the ass for anyone who has to deal with their proprietary, incompatible with everything file formats.

by mparkms

6/5/2026 at 5:24:46 AM

A web search will give you a faster and better answer than you will get by asking here.

by jibal

6/5/2026 at 6:32:40 AM

Apparently not, since most of the results I get (that are in English) are about a lawsuit they lost for violating the AGPL.

by Pay08

6/5/2026 at 12:04:18 PM

I agree with some of them. Others need much more nuance.

> - External map providers were iced out of hte market until this past year

This was a positive for literally every Korean resident and only a negative for Google shareholders and a few tourists who had to download a local maps app. Boohoo, politicians doing things benefiting their people.

> - You need a phone number to sign up for literally anything.

The reality is that this also has many upsides. Admitting this doesn't do well on HN though. The truth is that it's a defensible tradeoff, you can disagree with it but pretending it's clear-cut is ignorant.

> - the de-facto document format are crappy hancom formats

In 2026 nobody uses these except for when dealing with government institutions. Saying they're de facto for Korea as a whole is wild generalization.

by deaux

6/6/2026 at 3:06:57 AM

I don't get the phone number thing - why is needing a $20 burner phone to post on a forum or blog a positive?

by Glyptodon

6/5/2026 at 8:02:13 AM

They had the “Nth Room” case[0] which may have laid the road for a stronger approval to this.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nth_Room_case

by sharpshadow

6/5/2026 at 10:26:08 AM

It was a horrible case indeed, but weren't they using Telegram.

by boltless

6/5/2026 at 6:32:31 PM

Huh, their internet forums look like Hacker News or such old-time sites rather than modern apps like Reddit or something. In terms of UI UX and use of web tech. Surprised these have like 20% population of country as visitors.

I wonder if it’s their language that made them stick with older forum style rather than English speaking world’s apps?

I like their way more.

by renoir

6/5/2026 at 5:25:28 AM

It would be funny if someone hacked the database to block any praise of the current politicians and this censorship, only allowing criticism of it.

by gblargg

6/5/2026 at 5:48:27 AM

There seems to be less hacktivism now.

by Cider9986

6/4/2026 at 11:45:56 PM

Original: South Korean Online Communities Will Need to Scan Every Images with AI Censorship Tools

by Cider9986

6/5/2026 at 4:28:39 AM

Will this affect non-Korean online communities in Korea? Like Instagram?

by malloryerik

6/5/2026 at 2:29:29 AM

Minority Report wasn't supposed to be an instruction manual ffs.

Also, will the AI curtail artistic activity? Things it doesn't recognize? We had watchdogs on personal expression before, one of the outcomes was "degenerate art" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degenerate_art]

by eqvinox

6/6/2026 at 12:34:24 AM

I wonder if this will create a market for freer forums for Koreans that are hosted in other countries?

by GaryBluto

6/6/2026 at 3:35:33 AM

U.S. social media has been doing this for a while, right?

by functionmouse

6/6/2026 at 2:50:57 AM

What is CMS in this context?

by temporallobe

6/5/2026 at 5:52:48 AM

Penis depictions will evolve.

by HlessClaudesman

6/5/2026 at 2:31:05 AM

A little backstory to Korea's political scene: left leaning political power has come to power , similar to UK's Starmer, and have started implementing draconian surveillance laws.

There's almost no real opposition to stop these type of insane laws that violate individual freedoms. Expect more weirdness out of Korea

by zuzululu

6/5/2026 at 2:34:19 AM

Starmer is about as left headed as a straight line railway across Australia. Corbyn was left (maybe).

cf. https://www.politicalcompass.org/uk2024

Even if you consider that page biased in whatever way - it's still useful for comparisons on the same scale. E.g. https://www.politicalcompass.org/norway2025

by eqvinox

6/5/2026 at 12:10:38 PM

Guy is all over this post commenting nonsense because he's in love with the party that instated martial law recently and tried to do a coup. You're wasting your time on him.

You're completely right that the Korean blues are anything but left. Not even just compared to Corbyn, even compared to European labor parties (the champagne "social democrats" in each country). Biden was more left-wing than the Korean blues. That tells you everything.

In many ways the Korean blues are more nationalist than the reds, which can't be said about basically any modern relevant left-wing party elsewhere. Another good indicator they're absolutely not left-wing.

by deaux

6/5/2026 at 4:31:56 AM

he is objectively left wing. People are over indexing on his controversies instead of looking at his policy platform as a whole. Also take into account that he is in a democracy the leans right on many un-impactful but hot topic issues.

by AuthAuth

6/5/2026 at 4:20:44 AM

Starmer is a Fabian. He is textbook, self identified left and socialist. He is pretty much a poster child for leftism.

by sophrosyne42

6/5/2026 at 6:18:15 AM

Not in policy, no he definitively isn't. It's actually possible to join and have a career in political party without believing a word of what they stand for. There are examples all over the world, but Starmer is among the most blatant ones.

My best theory is that he's chum with one of UK's many spy lords - that is, upper class twats with a sinecure in the secret services - and that he's trying to destroy Labour for them (and the good of the country of course). He only failed last election because the conservative party was even more self-destructive.

by vintermann

6/5/2026 at 5:55:43 AM

The whole uk establishment including the civil service is one giant expression of fabian thought. The civil service runs itself, appointing itself and ignoring political power. Labour with Starmer just happens to a time where fabians are in control of the entire state.

by christkv

6/5/2026 at 10:46:29 AM

> Corbyn was left (maybe).

Corbyn was (is?) a Castro-sympathizing communist. If you classify him as "left (maybe)", then I don't even want to ask what is "left" to you.

by neonstatic

6/5/2026 at 4:19:31 AM

What does the left have to do with this? South Korea has had draconian anti-online privacy laws for as long as it has had the internet.

by mullingitover

6/6/2026 at 5:46:01 AM

False. Korea has always had liberal freedom of speech online.

by zuzululu

6/5/2026 at 6:06:29 AM

maybe that's where the irony starts?

by sysguest

6/5/2026 at 4:25:48 AM

If the implication is that the left is more willing to violate freedoms, you're leaving out that the right-wing president was ousted for attempting to subvert democracy by instituting martial law for no good reason.

by mparkms

6/5/2026 at 4:18:23 AM

Sure buddy, just omit the fact that the last president tried to do a coup and is now serving a long prison sentence. It's all the fault of the left leaning guy, there was no censorship or state surveillance in Korea before that.

by anigbrowl

6/5/2026 at 4:40:24 AM

I’m Korean too, but people forget that the right wing has also enforced censorship. Personally, I think the Korean right wing cries out for freedom, but in reality their ideology is rooted in the anti-communist thought of the anti-communist liberal era. I myself have somewhat negative feelings toward communism, but the so-called 'right-wing' regime in Korea is really just nostalgia for dictatorship. The current Korean administration is called 'left-wing' only because the opposition is far-right. In fact, the Korean Political History Association has long classified the 'Democratic Party'(Party name) administration as conservative. This is simply due to a poor understanding of politics[1],[2]

[1]https://www.khan.co.kr/article/202502272123025

[2]https://www.kci.go.kr/kciportal/ci/sereArticleSearch/ciSereA...

by jdw64

6/5/2026 at 9:34:49 PM

> the right wing has also enforced censorship

Not familiar with Korean politics, but both left and right are immensely pro-censorship here in America. For the most part, the only thing that's saving us (at least so far) is that they can't agree on what to censor.

by commandlinefan

6/6/2026 at 3:25:44 AM 

  > but both left and right are immensely pro-censorship here in America
it seems to me these words have/are becoming non-descriptive. idk what to use, but purple vs green sounds just as good...

same with conservative vs liberal; its just not that simple with republicans typically associated with conservatism are on a revolutionary tear, whereas democrats are doing the rear-guard action trying to conserve the current system with small tweaks etc...

by andrekandre

6/5/2026 at 6:12:33 AM

I don’t think this framing works nor is your attitude of "I'm korean I automatically know more than a foreigner who studied Korean history". It is true that Korean conservatives have used censorship and authoritarian language before such as Yoon’s 2024 martial-law attempt is the obvious recent example, and nobody serious should minimize that but that does not make the Democratic Party some neutral actor, or make censorship a uniquely partisan problem. The current ruling party's previous president, Moon Jae-in’s gov, passed laws specifically suppressing anti-North Korea leaflet and threatened activists against sending them into North Korea which the Constitutional Court later struck it down as an excessive restriction on free speech. That is a clear sign of suppressing free speech at home to directly appease an authoritarian country!

Same with media regulation in 2021, the same party tht is in power now pushed laws that directly supressed press freedom, prompting strong condemnation from Reporters without Borders and international human rights group. And lo behold you have laws now extend beyond simply press to free speech on the internet exactly as they had warned 5 years ago.

The trend of suppressing free speech continues under current admin where lawmakers passed another false-information bill allowing up to 5x damages against news orgs and independent journalist's YouTube channels, where there is no bipartisan oversight in arbitration and it is heavily in control by the ruling "democratic party".

The Korean Democratic Party is not Marxist, but seemingly have shown affinity for them from failed sunshine policy that directly enabled the development of nuclear weapons and human rights abuses with North Korea, pushing more state intervention/lawfare than any other party in history. Korean ideology does not map cleanly onto US/Europe labels and attempt to smearing conservatives to gatekeep the true political reality of Sout hKorea and its history is simply immature.

by zuzululu

6/5/2026 at 6:24:14 AM

First, I'm a bit sorry for my somewhat sarcastic tone earlier. You're also right about some things.

That said, your research basically differs from what the Korean Political Science Association states. Regardless, both of Korea's two major political parties fundamentally like authority and censorship. Looking at their actual censorship policies, both have done quite similar things. So what difference is there? Mainly, Korea's conservative party-affiliated newspapers have more influence, so they are stronger at agenda-setting.

Judging by your tone, I think you basically understand Korea through the lens of Christian conservative issues, especially related to religion. But in reality, there are complex circumstances behind it.

First, as you said, the issue of 'fake news' is fairly complicated in Korea. Starting with the Yoon Seok-youl administration imposing heavy penalties on actual 'real news' by labeling it as fake news through the KCSC, there has been basic political pressure on algorithmic intervention by Korea's major platforms. Also, President Park Geun-hye conducted KakaoTalk surveillance and a blacklist of the cultural sector. But these insider details don't get conveyed to you as a foreigner. Why is that?

It's partly because Korea's left-leaning news media lack global competitiveness. Your perspective is mostly colored by Korean Christian conservatism. Why might that be? Probably because your news about Korea mostly comes through Korean-American Christian conservative media outlets. And Christian groups in Korea are closely connected to the far right. Why? Because religious groups can easily provide personnel to help with election campaigning, so there is a collusive relationship. Anyway, I don't think your perspective is entirely wrong, but your tone was so intense and you so harshly 'condemned' the opposing side that I became a bit sarcastic. Your perspective does make some sense.

However, I do think there is a problem with the materials available for foreigners to study this issue. That also feels like part of Korea's lack of global competitiveness

by jdw64

6/5/2026 at 6:49:29 AM

Ah there's the "You are foreigner you will never understand" line!

You went from Democratic Party is akshually conservative to "everybody censors in korea, you dont get us" but if both sides censor, then my point stands: the Democratic Party does not get laundered as harmless just because it uses words that sound nice and formal.

I'm not a christian and it really doesn't change the previous actions to ban anti-North Korean activists sending leaflets, lawfares against journalists and non bipartisan arbitration of the press.

Earlier you said that AI censorship is okay because the whole country benefits economically from more AI use and that it should be exported to other countries. Now you are blaming Christians.

I don't think you are coming across as rational or persuasive and the constant condescending tone towards foreigners in general is off putting. I think if anything you are unable to recognize your own political bias and trying to gatekeep Korea as this weird orientalist object. and it really isn't.

by zuzululu

6/5/2026 at 6:58:38 AM

Hmm, you're too fixated on specific words. To be honest, I think you're only seeing fragments of South Korea.

It's not because you're a foreigner — the problem is simply that what you see from outside is only a fragment of the issue.

Look back at your original post.

And for the record, I was mostly making dark jokes.

This time, purely for your sake, I'll speak without any dark humor — just the facts:

Banning leaflets sent by North Korean activists — this issue has both pros and cons. These actions fundamentally create military tension for residents living near the border with North Korea. The Democratic Party side (pro-Sunshine Policy) naturally dislikes it. It's a conflict between personal convictions and national interests.

The more AI usage increases, the more it benefits the national economy? — Not exactly. South Korea is so favorable toward AI primarily because the country has many memory semiconductor companies. The government is simply shaping policy to ride that trend.

And my comment about exporting the censorship system if it succeeds — that was just a dark joke.

Legal attacks on journalists, non-transpartisan media regulations — these are problems that every administration has faced. And yet your original post only focused on the 'current' government, didn't it? Let's not twist what you said.

If you had written a comment saying something like 'South Korea transpartisanly regulates the media and has a national character that loves restricting freedom,' I would have upvoted you and praised you. But instead, you framed it as if only one administration behaves that way, while whitewashing others — and your tone was so assertive. That's the only reason I criticized you.

No one hates South Korea more than I do.

by jdw64

6/5/2026 at 9:19:04 AM

> No one hates South Korea more than I do.

It would appear that's a pretty common sentiment among the South Korean youth(which probably means under 60), actually.

Not even North Koreans want to flee to South Korea. Most go to China and stay there as minority residents.

The regime had to go to some seedy district in China to pick up a "defector" with totally real stories they could parade.

by avadodin

6/5/2026 at 7:19:37 AM

And actually, I think foreigners can see Korea from a different perspective. If anything, someone without those cultural habits can view things more from a third-party perspective.

To be honest, zuzululu, reading your posts, I can tell that you're someone who deeply respects individual human values. But that aside, when you criticize 'the left-wing regime,' other commenters besides me bring up things like martial law under previous administrations, don't they? And calling it a 'left-wing regime' doesn't even make sense — it contradicts what Korean political science associations have clearly stated. The Democratic Party of Korea is fundamentally a big-tent party oriented toward centrist conservatism.

So it's not 'you're a foreigner, so you wouldn't know.' Rather, I can't help but point out that the articles you have access to are biased. I also have some sense of why you're angry. If I made you feel bad, there are points where I could apologize — but I don't understand why you insist on framing this as a 'left-wing regime.'

People who obsess over 'left' and 'right' like this tend to attribute everything good to their own side and everything bad to the other side, and that diminishes the value of your thinking. The starting point of the problem with your post is precisely that what you call the 'left-wing regime' differs from how Korean political science associations define it.

South Korea has many problems: extreme concentration in the Seoul metro area, severe gender conflict, a society that treats anyone without a prestigious degree as a failure, absurd working hours, exploitation of young children, and a sharp drop in job quality outside the capital region, just to name a few.

You may define this as arrogance toward foreigners in general, but that's not it. It's simply that the claims you're making directly contradict what Korean academic associations have established.

by jdw64

6/5/2026 at 7:06:49 AM

Looking at your first reply, you basically say in context that it's a left-wing regime with no one to stop it — but I don't understand why this is linked to a 'left-wing regime.' Even the Korean Political Science Association basically classifies the Democratic Party as part of the conservative camp. In fact, it's more accurate to see it as a big tent party.

In that context, reading your post makes me ask back: 'So were the right-wing parties fine?' But that's not the case — it's just that censorship incidents happen under every administration.

If you had written something like, 'South Korea tries to censor under every administration, and the National Assembly is all in cahoots,' then naturally I would have said, 'Are you Korean? You seem to know Korean history very well.

by jdw64

6/5/2026 at 2:36:40 AM

Starmer is not left-leaning, he's a liberal (and supports austerity). People should learn the difference between the left, the right and liberalism.

by js8

6/5/2026 at 2:42:59 AM

Traditional labels are becoming useless anyway, liberal can mean anything from libertarian free market enjoyer to radical progressive depending on who you are talking to. And I am talking about self-identified labels!

You also have many right wingers (internationally) moving towards things like industrial policy, subsidies, and a populist labor focus (coupled with anti-immigration rhetoric of course). In some cases, even nationalization is under discussion. It’s a wild time to try and label things.

by iamnothere

6/5/2026 at 3:47:16 AM

A better axis is libertarian-authoritarian, because the "left" and the "right" aren't inherently either.

by ronsor

6/5/2026 at 5:26:08 AM

My main point was there is not a single axis. Even left and right are not strictly opposites, you can have a society that decides based on some mix of authority and democracy (individual preference). They are only opposites at the extreme, if you insist that every political problem has to be addressed in the particular way.

by js8

6/5/2026 at 5:20:15 AM

The labels are not useless, they represent certain values and disagreements over how society should be governed. Of course, each of the values has a failure mode, but they are different. The values are:

- Right-wing, conservative, authoritarian - society should be governed by elites, conflict should be resolved by submission to authority

- Left-wing, socialist, democratic - society should be governed by equal peers, conflict should be resolved by democratic consensus

- Liberal, individualist, pro-freedom - the question of societal governance (and the arising conflict) should be avoided if possible by giving each participant their own life independent on others

Of course it is confusing because people cheat and do not always want to state their aims clearly. The values are also not opposites, but independent; they can also be applied per problem. For example, most famously, some communists were both left (they wanted a socialist society without classes) and right (they wanted the transformation under the party authority). But each pair of these has a similar conflict like that, so (aside from the communist spectrum above) you get also capitalist spectrum between right vs liberal, and anarchist spectrum between left vs liberal. In the middle of all 3, things are roughly social-democratic.

by js8

6/5/2026 at 12:41:50 PM

This is the traditional view, I’m saying it’s becoming useless because ordinary people don’t make these distinctions and the labels have become useless for communication and understanding. All politics is becoming syncretic/heterodox and terms like “liberal” have been stretched to meaninglessness. The labels that political science uses no longer map to reality in a useful way. Maybe we need new labels.

I think this is also why the term “right-wing” has been misapplied to anyone who challenges the status quo, regardless of their other political positions or their nominal political orientation. Things are bad when literal Communists can be labeled “right-wing” because of their position on some issue. (Yes I have seen this happen.)

by iamnothere

6/5/2026 at 3:05:52 AM

at this point I don't get bogged down in the details. They're all just different masks for authoritarianism.

by yonaguska

6/5/2026 at 4:59:44 AM

That's very reductionist, and itself a kind of right-wing (authoritarian) idea - all politicians are corrupt so there is no meaningful way to change things.

by js8

6/5/2026 at 5:17:26 AM

Indeed. Aside from being extraordinarily intellectually lazy, bothsidesing actually enables corruption by failing to identify it, or failing to distinguish degrees of corruption that are so severe as to be more differences in kind than differences in degree. And thus in the U.S. we get Trump and his entire cabinet, Clarence Thomas and the rest of the Federalist Society, the Kochs, money pouring into elections via Citizens United courtesy of John Roberts, and much of the rest of the GOP political apparatus ... in large part a result of people staying home or voting 3rd party because their "principles" didn't let them vote for "the lesser of two evils".

by jibal

6/5/2026 at 11:17:24 AM

It's not intellectually lazy, it's being intellectually tired.

Both parties only every get anything done in this country when it comes to voting to restrict our rights. Ideologically, I'm slightly right leaning. My primary value is individual rights are more important. But if I could, I would vote for Ron Wyden(D) despite the fact that I disagree with many of his positions, he's still one of the few that has a spine to oppose things like the federal spying apparatus.

I just don't see the point of investing myself in caring when 98 percent of our reps just really don't care and only focus on manufacturing outrage around wedge issues that they can't or won't actually address so that they can keep their jobs and continue to accrue massive amounts of wealth from lobbying and insider trading. We get Trump because the system is so thoroughly broken on both sides and enough people are frustrated the point that they are "protest" voting.

by yonaguska

6/5/2026 at 1:28:02 PM

I can understand it's tiring. But, as someone who was born in totalitarian regime - you still have plenty opportunities to change things in the U.S. Many U.S. states have direct democracy, which is unique in vast majority of the world. You still have free media. You can influence primaries of the two parties.

I don't think people are "protest" voting. You're the one protest voting - by not voting at all. You should ask yourself, why they bother, when you do not.

by js8

6/5/2026 at 2:24:47 PM

The system does not allow good candidates to make it through to a vote. (When it does, they are quickly either ejected or “brought in” to the system.)

There are other, more effective ways to vote than at the ballot box. Money, time, voice (depending on your reach), protest, direct action can all have a greater impact.

IMHO building parallel systems is the most important thing right now, as the primary political system is entering a period of crisis that it may not survive. Parallel systems, especially strong local systems, have a long and successful history.

by iamnothere

6/5/2026 at 8:22:44 PM

Oh, I still vote. I feel that if I don't, then I have no right to complain. no matter how unhappy I am with the candidates.

by yonaguska

6/5/2026 at 2:50:16 AM

He's a twonk and Britain is essentially a police state at this point. The American Revolutionary War was fought over far less than what is going on right now.

by 866-RON-0-FEZ

6/5/2026 at 4:00:10 AM

[flagged]

by SV_BubbleTime

6/5/2026 at 4:25:04 AM

So what accounts for the current state of the USA? Not exactly platonic ideals of courage these days.

by rfrey

6/5/2026 at 6:18:17 AM

My pet theory is a knock on history of reverberating PTS, people pander to the need for a calmed environment suitable for survivors with PTS which creates a vacuum for biggest emotions wins and other low boundaries behavior, gambling/internet addiction.

by sellmesoap

6/5/2026 at 2:32:06 PM

USA has no issues with courage.

We have individual resistance to police state actions all the time.

We have other issues, but individualism and people willing to go to bat for enlightenment principles is not one of them.

by SV_BubbleTime

6/5/2026 at 3:31:19 AM

Are crooks called liberals these days?

by fithisux

6/5/2026 at 4:19:32 AM

[flagged]

by sophrosyne42

6/5/2026 at 5:36:41 AM

At this point, no, he's just nothing. A wet washcloth, we'd say in German. He's abandoned a whole bunch of promises and watered down the remaining ones, without really setting a direction. And he's probably out soon anyhow.

by eqvinox

6/5/2026 at 12:11:47 PM

The previous fascist governments were not much better. The oligarchy derived from that.

by rurban

6/5/2026 at 4:19:12 AM

[dead]

by donkeylazy456

6/5/2026 at 4:30:41 AM

[flagged]

by jdw64

6/5/2026 at 3:26:22 AM

They have stock in nvidia

by matt3210

6/5/2026 at 3:25:38 AM

The catholic church fought the printing press for hundreds of years. Lets see how long our rulers fight the internet.

by petermcneeley

6/5/2026 at 6:06:54 AM

No they didn’t, quite the opposite, they were the main customers and and certainly accelerated the spread of the technology. Of course banning the printing of specific books is another matter.

Islamic countries OTOH handle banned or strictly restricted its use. Coincidentally most progress there ceased and they were stuck in the 1500s for the next 400 years or so..

by wqaatwt

6/5/2026 at 3:32:40 AM

The printing press was very much an invention /not/ at the disposal of the citizens. It analogizes poorly to the Internet.

by themafia

6/5/2026 at 4:23:01 AM

Of course not, it’s the books that people had access to.

by lokar

6/5/2026 at 5:48:51 AM

How many people are involved in ISPs, data centers, and other internet backbones? Most people are consumers rather than producers or "printing press" operators.

by t-3

6/5/2026 at 8:02:39 AM

You just broadcast your voice to millions of people, became instantly archived in google and several other sites, all at zero direct cost to yourself, other than the monthly access fee.

There is an obvious distinction.

Finally I'd ask you to observe the entirety of social media's existence.

by themafia

6/5/2026 at 10:46:34 AM

The vast majority of people never broadcast to the public like we're doing right now.

by t-3

6/6/2026 at 12:07:27 AM

Best to revisit your ideas pf which leaflets were popular, and who was making them in the 1500s

by bethekidyouwant

6/5/2026 at 4:29:43 AM

Actually it's perfect. How long did it take rulers to go from fighting the printing press to using it for propaganda and their own ambitions? The internet has just speed run that same course.

by morkalork

6/5/2026 at 8:11:18 AM

> How long did it take rulers to go from fighting the printing press to using it for propaganda and their own ambitions?

Probably the moment something negative was published about them.

> The internet has just speed run that same course

And citizen journalism has never been more powerful.

There will be no invention of man that will eliminate jealousy, avarice or hatred. Objectively I'd rather be alive today than at any point in our recorded history.

by themafia

6/5/2026 at 3:30:29 AM

It's far worse.

by fithisux

6/5/2026 at 7:14:18 AM

12 months time every country will require it.

by wewewedxfgdf

6/5/2026 at 4:23:00 AM

Do they specify a particular model? Is that model public?

by zb3

6/5/2026 at 5:10:40 AM

Can't they simply move their hosting and domains to other countries?

by DeathArrow

6/5/2026 at 11:27:19 AM

Moving servers never move liability of citizens operating them

by prmoustache

6/5/2026 at 4:30:44 AM

People predict that by 2032, the only country on earth to host websites will be the USA.

by polski-g

6/5/2026 at 5:50:52 AM

Or on the Tor network.

by Cider9986

6/5/2026 at 4:55:42 AM

What do the bets on the prediction markets look like, and are these the same people that Trump is always referring?

by dylan604

6/5/2026 at 3:30:10 AM

"will need"???

by fithisux

6/5/2026 at 8:06:44 AM

[flagged]

by 3vo-ai

6/5/2026 at 3:28:22 AM

[dead]

by d456fg78hj90k

6/5/2026 at 4:22:41 AM

[flagged]

by indiandeodorant