Press Release
[Joint Statement] President Yoon Suk-yeol Must Immediately Lift the Unconstitutional ‘Martial Law’!
We condemn President Yoon Suk-yeol’s declaration of martial law during a time of peace, labeling...
![[Right to Know Infringement Task Force][Parliamentary Forum] Yoon Seok-yeol government’s Attempt to Legalize Information Concealment: Issues and Tasks of the Revision of the Officla Information Disclosure Act](https://www.opennet.or.kr/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/정보공개법-토론회2-1024x684.jpg)
[Right to Know Infringement Task Force][Parliamentary Forum] Yoon Seok-yeol government’s Attempt to Legalize Information Concealment: Issues and Tasks of the Revision of the Officla Information Disclosure Act
On November 11, 2024, the Civil Society Organizations Network held a parliamentary forum titled...
Submitted an Opposition to the National Assembly: Amendment to the Protection of Communication Secrets Act (by Parliamentary Member Cheong-rae Jung, Bill No. 2204138)
On November 13, 2024, OpenNet, a non-profit organization, submitted an opposition opinion to the...

South Korea’s Index of Freedom on The Net 2024 Drops, Reveals the Failure of Yoon Seokyeol Government Administration
South Korea should take steps to ensure internet freedom in line with international human rights...
Open Net opposes MP Yoon Moon-Seok’s bill to put online news curation under “fairness” review
1. Highlights of the revision The amendment aims to prohibit internet news service providers from...
LITIGATION

To Ensure the Openness and Fairness of the Internet
by Kyoungmi (Kimmy) Oh | Researcher at Open Net Korea Kyoungmi (Kimmy) Oh, a researcher at Open...
EFF Submits an Amicus Brief in Open Net’s Constitutional Challenges to “the Internet Censorship and Surveillance Act”
The international digital rights organization Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) submitted an...
Standing in solidarity with the Women and People of South Korea as the Government Denies Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights
Women On Web, an online organization committed to providing vital information on sexual and...
Open Net Korea, on behalf of the ‘Bad Fathers’, lodged a constitutional complaint regarding defamation
February 5, 2024 On February 2, 2024, Open Net Korea is initiating a renewed constitutional...
EFF Supports Open Net’s legal challenge against mandatory upload filter
Electronic Frontier Foundation is filing the attached amicus brief in a constitutional challenge...
OPEN SEMINAR
7th Social Rights Forum-Digital Rights: Communication and Accessibility in the Digital Society
On December 23, 2024, Jiwon Sohn of OpenNet Korea participated as a panelist in the "Forum on...
![[Right to Know Infringement Task Force][Parliamentary Forum] Yoon Seok-yeol government’s Attempt to Legalize Information Concealment: Issues and Tasks of the Revision of the Officla Information Disclosure Act](https://www.opennet.or.kr/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/정보공개법-토론회2-1024x684.jpg)
[Right to Know Infringement Task Force][Parliamentary Forum] Yoon Seok-yeol government’s Attempt to Legalize Information Concealment: Issues and Tasks of the Revision of the Officla Information Disclosure Act
On November 11, 2024, the Civil Society Organizations Network held a parliamentary forum titled...
![[2024 Democracy Lab Conference] Open Net Co-Hosts and Participates in the Session: “Democracy in the Platform Era: Challenges and Aspirations”](https://www.opennetkorea.org/wp-content/uploads/et_temp/image-722x1024-183244_722x675.png)
[2024 Democracy Lab Conference] Open Net Co-Hosts and Participates in the Session: “Democracy in the Platform Era: Challenges and Aspirations”
Date and Time: Friday, November 22, 2024, 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM Venue: Roh Moo-Hyun Civic Center,...

CSOs gather to discuss HR-friendly technical standards; Open Net stresses on end-to-end principle
Open Net co-hosted the following event with UN Office of Higher Commissioner on Human Rights :...

Platform accountability in South Asia & SEA – APrIGF2024.
On August 21, 2024, K.S. Park, Director, Open Net, spoke at the above titled session at APrIGF....
COURT ACTIONS
Open Net Expresses Disappointment Over Court Decision on ‘Bad Fathers’ Case and Urges the National Assembly to Abolish Criminal Truth Defamation Law
You can read the Korean original here.
Open Net Korea Welcomes the Constitutional Court’s Decision Nullifying the Internet Real-Name System for the Election Campaign Period
The Court Held the System Unconstitutional for ‘Infringement on the Freedom of Anonymous...
Open Net Welcomes the Court’s Decision to Acquit Those Charged With Truth Defamation for Running a Website That Lists Parents Who Refuse to Pay Child Support
On January 15, all 7 jurors and the full bench acquitted the operator of a website called 'Bad...
The Supreme Court Must Reverse the Lower Court’s Unfair Decision That Strips the Possibility of Fighting Against Unlawful Access to Subscriber Data
Subscriber data (also known as communications data) refers to a subscribers' personal information...
Open Net Expresses Regret over the Constitutional Court’s Decision That the Real Name System for Mobile Phones Is Constitutional
The Constitutional Court of Korea ruled against the complainants in a 7:2 decision on the mobile...
education
Seoul Administrative Court Affirms PIPC’s sanction on Meta for third party targeted advertising for lack of effective consent; Meta has yet to mend
The Seoul Administrative Court decided on January 23, 2025 (Case No. 2023Gu-Hap54259) to affirm...
[RightsCon 2025] Defamation Law Undermining Freedom of Press – Media Defence Roundtable Review
Open Net Korea participated in a roundtable hosted by the Media Defence on February 24, 2025, as...
[Colloquium Presentation] The Bizarre World of Happiness Drawn by Image Generative AI
On January 17, 2025, Kyoungmi (Kimmy) Oh attended a colloquium titled “Is Generative AI a Game...
![[RightsCon 2025] Data Privacy in the Era of AI: Public and Private Sector Perspectives](https://www.opennetkorea.org/wp-content/uploads/et_temp/RC25_Poster-for-Data-Protection-Session-819x1024-600353_819x675.png)
[RightsCon 2025] Data Privacy in the Era of AI: Public and Private Sector Perspectives
On Feb 27, 2025, Kyoungmi (Kimmy) Oh gave a speech in the session, "Data protection in the era of...
![[Press Release] German Broadcasters ARD and ZDF Should Apologize to Korea and the Korean People “The Whole World Is Watching”](https://www.opennetkorea.org/wp-content/uploads/et_temp/독일-공영방송은-사과하라-1024x1024-1-242571_1024x675.jpg)
[Press Release] German Broadcasters ARD and ZDF Should Apologize to Korea and the Korean People “The Whole World Is Watching”
March 6, 2025by the Network for Freedom of Expression Against Hatred and Censorship (abbreviated...
POLICY RESEARCH
[Press Conference] In Condemnation of ‘Jeonju Gender Equity’ for Its Decision to Censor and Discriminate Based on Artists’ Conscience
*An English translation is currently unavailable for this publication. You can find the original...

Open Net Hosts National Assembly Seminar on the Blocking of Access to North Korean Media on the Internet
The Ministry of Unification recently announced plans to gradually open up access to North Korean...

Part 3 of Open Net’s Special Lecture Series on Media Literacy – How to Distinguish Between Good and Bad News (14:00 June 8, Online and Offline)
You can read the Korean original here.
[Press Conference] Open Net · Institute for Inclusive Society Announces Research Results on “Digital Literacy Problems and Solutions for the Elderly” (May 23)
You can read the Korean original here.

Open Net Co-hosts Open Government Week as Part of the Open Government Partnership
You can read the Korean original here.
CAMPAIGN
Stop Internet Censoring
We have seen many attempts to censor the Internet under the pretext of copyright protection. Notorious attempts are SOPA and PIPA of 2012, which triggered the largest online protest in history and was eventually withdrawn, and ACTA, a plurilateral trade deal killed by the European Parliament in 2012. Now, Korean government tries to enact a much stronger internet censoring rule. If it passes the legislative body, a copyright protection agency may cut off access to websites that the agency views as copyright infringing. The concerns over mass surveillance and privacy vulnerabilities by the proposed rule are widespread amid the government’s new drive to block “https” traffic by SNI eavesdropping (See, press release of Korea Communication Commission on February 12, 2019 and press release of MCST on May 2, 2018, both in Korean).
Intermediary Liability Campaign
Korean law (Copyright Act Article 103, Information Communication Network Act Article 44-2) requires intermediaries to take down all content for which anyone sends a takedown notice, regardless whether the content violates any right or law, not as a condition of qualifying for a safe harbor but as a positive obligation. As a result of this ‘mandatory’ notice-and-takedown system, the intermediaries are forced to take down thousands of contents daily which they believe to be perfectly lawful. Also, Korean laws require some intermediaries like P2P and cyberlockers to implement ‘technical measures’ to filter out copyright infringing material (Copyright Act, Article 104) and obscenity (Telecommunications Business Act Article 22-3 Paragraph 1), and requires all intermediaries to implement technical measures to filter out child pornography (Children and Juvenile Sex Protection Act Article 17). These ‘technical measures’ requirement ends up requiring the intermediaries to monitor each and every third party content posted on their services, turning the Internet into a space open to only those contents implicitly permitted by the intermediaries.
Open Net Korea has engaged in various efforts to bring the Korean law into compliance with the international norm, including but not limited to participating in the Steering Committee of the Manila Principles for Intermediary Liability, co-authoring a Good Practice Guideline for Intermediary Liability Regime published by the Network of Centers for Internet and Society, and calling the international community to write to the relevant officials.
Open Payment Campaign
Currently, the law requires all online payments above 300K Korean won (about US$300) to be signed by so-called “accredited certificates”, which are backed only by a Korean government agency operating as a root CA but none of the internationally recognized certificate accreditation agencies and therefore require various plugins to be downloaded from various vendors (most often through Active X technology due to the 90% plus dominance of Internet Explorer in the country) enabling and protecting the certificates. Such monolithic “closed” payment rule made the Korea-based e-commerce inaccessible for overseas customers and very inconvenient for domestic customers and indoctrinated Korean customers into a dangerous habit of accepting downloads of unknown origins, who therefore became easy targets for pfishing and other financial frauds. Open Net calls for the dismantling of the payment rule mandating use of the government-backed-certificates that are not really “accredited” in any global sense.
In 2013, Open Net ran a petition drive to file a Citizens’ Audit on the Korean Financial Services Commission responsible for implementing the closed payment rule, and obtained the sponsorship of more than 300 signatories who signed on-line at this site.
In 2013, Open Net ran a grassroots petition drive here to demand that the authorities overhaul the online payment rule so that the Korean net users can make payments without the nail-biting, computer-freezing, caution-numbing downloading of all the plugins. Several thousands have signed on putting pressure on the legislators and authorities.
In the latter half of 2013, Open Net lobbied for a Digital Signature Act amendment bill allowing digital signatures to be approved by internationally recognized root authorities and a Electronic Financial Transactions Act amendment bill requiring the Financial Services Commission rule-making to be technology-neutral in accordance with the Basel Principles. Here is the campaign headquarter page from which people will gather information and write mails, Twits, FB entries alerting the relevant lawmakers.
“Real” Child Abuse Prevention Campaign
The law punishes virtual images of imaginary children such as in animation and adult-actor films under the same legal scheme as child pornography made of video-recording or “morphing” of real children, which carry mandatory minimum sentence of 5 years for production and, among other things, 10 years of employment ban and 20 years of residential address tracking, not to mention the stigma of “child sex offenders”. Such law resulted in police actions focused on online uploading and downloading of files at the expense of depleted resources for pornography involving real children, which ironically ended up indictment of juvenile computer users as “child sex offenders”. Open Net calls for amendment of the Child and Juvenile Sexual Abuse Prevention Act to make the law serve its real purpose.
Campaign to Strike Out the Three Strikes Rule
In Korea, the copyright Three-Strikes-Out Rule came into effect on July 23, 2009 and gave the government a power to disconnect users from the Internet in the name of copyright protection. So far, although no one has been disconnected from the Internet, 408 website accounts have been shut down and 468,446 warnings or takedowns have been executed by the South Korean government (The Ministry of Culture and the Korean Copyright Commission, an entity empowered to do so without judicial scrutiny under the three-strikes rule). There is no prior judical scrutiny. The government has the full discretion in determining whether the postings or the user accounts are to be taken down or not. This is administrative censorship done fast and cheap for the rightholders, however, suppressing freedom of expression and communication and Internet users’ fundamental right to access, and endangering the future of the free and open Internet.