Blog-Blockade
South Korea is still banning access to foreign blogs, for fear that they might include a link to the video showing the beheading of Korean hostage Kim Sun-il. This has not stopped Internet-savvy Koreans from seeing the video (the majority of the students in a colleague's class confessed to having seen the video, technically a crime in South Korea).
In the meantime, I have been forced to use proxies and other roundabout ways to maintain this blog and view others. When the proxies are overloaded with traffic, they don't work. Thus, this morning, I am unable to access many of my favorite blogs, which have nothing to do with Korea or Kim Sun-il. Catholic and Enjoying It and A Conservative Blog for Peace, for example, are two of the blogs that are currently banned in Korea!
About a week ago, I read that the government was planning to maintain the blog-blockade until last weekend. That deadline has come and gone and the blockade is still up. My fear is that the government has either:
A. found that blocking access to foreign sites is advantageous for Korea, hearkening back as it does to the country's reputation as "the Hermit Kingdom", or
B. just simply forgotten that the blockade is up and perhaps even forgotten how to take it down.
South Korea is still banning access to foreign blogs, for fear that they might include a link to the video showing the beheading of Korean hostage Kim Sun-il. This has not stopped Internet-savvy Koreans from seeing the video (the majority of the students in a colleague's class confessed to having seen the video, technically a crime in South Korea).
In the meantime, I have been forced to use proxies and other roundabout ways to maintain this blog and view others. When the proxies are overloaded with traffic, they don't work. Thus, this morning, I am unable to access many of my favorite blogs, which have nothing to do with Korea or Kim Sun-il. Catholic and Enjoying It and A Conservative Blog for Peace, for example, are two of the blogs that are currently banned in Korea!
About a week ago, I read that the government was planning to maintain the blog-blockade until last weekend. That deadline has come and gone and the blockade is still up. My fear is that the government has either:
A. found that blocking access to foreign sites is advantageous for Korea, hearkening back as it does to the country's reputation as "the Hermit Kingdom", or
B. just simply forgotten that the blockade is up and perhaps even forgotten how to take it down.
Redeemed by Our Savior, I work out my salvation with fear and trembling in Pohang, South Korea, where I live with my wife, daughter, and son and teach English at a science and technology university. Baptized a Methodist and raised a Missouri Synod Lutheran in Buffalo, NY, I spent six years as a guest of the Anglican Communion before being received by the Grace of God into the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church on the Feast of Saint Andrew, my patron, anno domini 2002.
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