27,000 websites promoted illicit activities: lawmaker

A lawmaker is promising stronger measures to prevent illicit activities online, citing data showing that five government organizations had requested the blocking of over 27,000 websites and social media accounts from public view. Drug offenses, document forgery and distribution of obscene material were the most frequent reasons. 

Based on data from the Korea Communications Standards Commission for the period from January through August, the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office, the Korea National Police Agency, the Korea Communications Commission, the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family and the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety filed requests asking that 27,837 websites be made inaccessible to the public. Rep. Noh Woong-rae of the Democratic Party of Korea released the information Tuesday.

Of all the complaints, Twitter accounts were the subject of 3,020, or 10.8 percent of the total. In contrast, only 33 reports concerned YouTube. About 42 percent of the Twitter reports concerned drug activity.

Twitter’s HTTPS encryption technology makes it difficult to block public access to certain accounts, and Noh questioned the effectiveness of Twitter’s policy of restricting illicit content such as posts promoting drugs, pornography and gambling.

Because there are limits to how much can be filtered out if the government relies only on self-policing by internet service providers, Noh said, “We will provide systematic measures to enforce legal responsibility on overseas operators who are pigeonholing illegal information online.”


By Lee Tae-hee (taeheelee@heraldcorp.com)