Damn in the US you can attempt to over throw the govt and stay in congress
Maybe that’s why I struggle to understand why this man was jailed… in my country, 68 year old men make openly seditious statements and they get put into government.
Oh, the irony. Even the democratic South Korea will act fascist and won’t allow freedom of speech.
Easy to say when you’re not in a nation sharing a huge border with an actual fascist state that you’re still at war with
The article says the poem is about yearning for a united Korea where Koreans don’t have to pay for education and healthcare and aren’t committing suicide over debts.
Hardly seems worth sending a 68 year old man to jail for over a year.
Lee Yoon-seop advocated for unification in his piece that was published in the North’s state media in 2016, South Korean media report.
He wrote that if the two Koreas were united under Pyongyang’s socialist system, people would get free housing, healthcare and education.
You omitted the key point here, the poem advocates for all of Korea to be united under the North Korean regime.
Ah, of course that changes everything. Throw the old men in jail
Jail is a bit extreme. True.
Personally I don’t agree with the charge but I can understand South Korea for not allowing glorification of the north. Anyone that thinks North Koreans have access to universal healthcare and quality eduction are lying to themselves.
tbf, part of being democratic means your people get to decide for themselves what they will and won’t allow, they have that overriding freedom. We, for instance, could amend our constitution to remove our 1st amendment, if we so wished. It’s a power we have.
That does not make them militaristic, aggressive, hyper-patriotic states though, which is something different.
True, democracy =/= freedom, though they usually (used to) go hand in hand
South Korea was the more brutal dictatorship of the two up until the ~90s.
Damn. NGL I’m a bit ignorant.
If you feel like crying, watch https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youth_of_May . Alternatively just read https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwangju_Uprising
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You should be free to praise North Korea if you wish without fear of imprisonment. I can’t put it more bluntly than that.
Dude wrote a poem for the North Korean state media advocating for the unification of Korea under the ‘Pyongyang’s socialist system’. Considering that the reason for the entire Korean war and the ongoing conflict between North Korea and South Korea is that both claim to be the only legitimate government of all Korea, I can see why they would find this seditious.
Freedom of speech is when you’re allowed to say things that don’t go against government policy.
Seems like that’s the new global definition of “freedom” in general
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A South Korean court has sentenced a 68-year-old man to 14 months in jail for praising the North in a poem.
He wrote that if the two Koreas were united under Pyongyang’s socialist system, people would get free housing, healthcare and education.
He was convicted under a law that prohibits public praise of North Korea.
Lee had been jailed for 10 months in the past for a similar offence, The Korea Herald reported.
In its ruling on Monday, a Seoul court said he “continued to generate and disseminate a considerable amount of propaganda that glorified and praised the North”, the Korea Herald said.
South Korea’s National Security Act outlaws the praise and promotion of “anti-government” organisations.
The original article contains 204 words, the summary contains 116 words. Saved 43%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
