The Economist Has Criticized the Korean Government’s Use of Censorship
This week, one of the world’s most influential magazines, The Economist, has criticized the online censorship laws in Korea. K-bloggers who are resident in Korea do need to be careful. As those who have sharply criticized Korea or individual Koreans know, posting articles online can be a dicey activity. Many K-bloggers have received threats, and are prevented, in general, from criticizing certain aspects of Korean policy-making. Most famously, the blogger Minerva was prosecuted in Korea, although he was eventually acquitted.

This Criticism is Too Late
To everyday Koreans, this is not new news at all. Neither is the story of Minerva. Most recently, the author of Black Out Korea, has been the subject of harsh criticism by native Koreans who found the content of Black Out Korea offensive. Here, the Seoul Gyopo Guide has opined that while the blog may indeed be offensive and in poor taste, that doesn’t mean that these scenes don’t exist in Korea. It is a fact that a casual observer can easily find them, with little or no effort. Nevertheless, death threats were reported made.

Anything Stifling Creativity is Bad
Despite the tardiness of The Economist’s criticism, the thesis is quite true. In particular, this statement is telling:

Yet South Korea’s mild paranoia about controlling information harms its reputation as a liberal democracy and undermines its potential as a creative powerhouse.

Why is this a problem? It is a problem because the most creative segment of the population are young, college graduates, who have the vitality, imagination, and the qualifications to turn that creativity into invention. For those outside Korea, it may be easy to point at the record low unemployment rate in Korea as evidence of its economic progress. However, just below the surface is the fact that Korea is over-educated, and under-employed to the extreme. Today, The Korea Times pointed out that the number of college graduates that are unemployed and not looking for a job are at an all-time high.
This is a particularly scary development. If the main consumers, and those that demand the best innovations in all consumer goods are the young, and those young are increasingly unemployed or under-employed, then how will they be able to buy the newest products? They won’t. In turn, that demand for the latest and greatest innovation has kept Korea’s companies on the cutting edge of development. That advantage could also be jeopardized in the long run.

These Aren’t Today’s Problems But…
This combination of censorship, chaebol dominance, and the unemployment of Korea’s college grads will not result in economic failure overnight. Then again, Japan’s decline has been gradual, but definite. Even without Japan’s latest natural disaster, Korea has taken the lead in many respects when it comes to innovation of consumer products, from home appliances to mobile phones. Some of that has been the result of policy, but much has been due to the decline in size and influence of Japan’s youth on its economy. Korea must avoid duplicating the slow, excruciating decline that is occurring in the Land of the Rising Sun.