Government Investigating Who Put Up Posters Critical of President Moon
|This is another example that there is not freedom of speech in South Korea:
Police said Monday they began a preliminary probe into North Korean-style posters that appeared on walls at several universities nationwide lampooning the current Moon Jae-in government over its key policies.
Yonhap
The National Police Agency said it is gathering facts on a number of 112 calls made since Saturday with regard to the anti-government posters found hanging on bulletin boards at least 30 colleges in Seoul, Busan, Gangwon, as well as the southern Gyeongsang and Jeolla regions.
“We will see if the content of the posters carry expressions that can be deemed defamation or contempt,” a NPA official said.
The 55-by-80 centimeter, two-page poster, entitled “A Letter to South Korean Students,” blasts President Moon Jae-in’s key policies, such as income-led growth, his push to phase out nuclear power and the policy of engagement with North Korea.
The poster is printed in the unique typeface North Korea often uses in its propaganda and appears intended as ridicule of the government.
It calls for the overthrow of the liberal Moon administration and ends with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s signature, by his official title as chairman of the DPRK State Affairs Commission.
The DPRK stands for the North’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
The poster, claiming to be written by Jeondaehyup, calls for students to join a massive rally slated for Saturday at a public park near Seoul’s Hyewha Station.
Jeondaehyup is an abbreviation for the now-disbanded hard-line national student activists’ association that led key democracy movements in the 1980s. The association had been attacked by South Korea’s conservative bloc for its pro-North Korea tendencies.
The Moon administration has been very active squelching freedom of speech in South Korea, but remember that the prior Park administration took legal action against political posters as well. However, a loop hole is to call a political poster a work of art and then it is apparently legal.
Korea has gone through 25+ years of feeling like the government was working for the betterment of the people and the advancement of the country within the world.
Many Koreans are not feeling that now.
It breaks my heart to see the government working hard to suppress harmless free speech instead of the million other things which could be done to better the country and help the people.
Sounds like Moon is worried about the Park/Lee treatment…