South Korea was the first country in the world to implement an internet censorship law. There is a historical record of censorship, regardless of which administration—left or right—was in power.

That said, it’s a complicated issue because these censorship systems also tend to create state IT contracts and job opportunities.

To make things more concrete: most local bulletin board systems and forum platforms are heavily tied to a specific commercial CMS. This is not a coincidence — government-affiliated projects often mandate that CMS, and developers here, lacking both English proficiency and exposure to global open-source alternatives, end up locked into its ecosystem. As a result, even basic AI censorship features become dependent on that vendor’s proprietary modules. When a tight deadline (less than a month) forces a purchase, there’s no room to explore better, cheaper, or more transparent options. The structure itself perpetuates vendor lock-in, weak technical capacity, and a cycle of superficial compliance rather than genuine innovation.

I do think a proposal that AI-filters content on small forums is a bit weird, and probably clumsy. But Korea faces a real problem and usually leans toward a bias to action and "just do it". It leads to weird stuff but also to dynamic problem solving. The part I'm trying to preempt here is measuring this against so called "universal" values; these French Revolution/Enlightenment ideas of universal rights aren't really universal, they're one culture's logic, consistent inside its own bubble but exported like it's the default for everyone. I'll say, I do like them. But other self-consistent logics exist, and I think Korea's set is one of them. It's going to sound cliché but it leans on harmony and the group where the Western one leans on the individual. Both produce aberrations, only different ones.

For example, first time I came here I thought it's crazy to have so many speeding cameras and CCTVs everywhere. Years later I didn't so much "got used to it" but I think it's a tradeoff that mostly works and I grew to appreciate it.

Korea prefers lightweight polices (literally friendly looking) with a lot of automated, bulk enforcement, instead of sparse enforcement backed by the occasional armored truck. That's a design choice, not a slide into dystopia.

So all I'm trying to convey is, keep an open mind, and don't apply some supposed "universal" mindset blindly. Critique the mechanism all you want. Just don't do it by treating one culture's values as the yardstick everyone else gets measured by.

Fwiw I think it's a misfire. But I don't think it's a slippery-slide down dystopia. It's just Tuesday.

Will this impact software exported out of Korea? I can't imagine Samsung will gain any popularity if their phones come prepackaged with AI censorship tools. It massively backfired when Apple planned to do it on iPhones.

- For the longest time, you needed a windows computer to access any sort of government or banking service, and it's still the case for most services

- Because of the reliance on crappy windows laptops, you see everyone who uses a laptop carries an external mouse around to places like coffee shops (bc their trackpads suck)

- the de-facto document format are crappy hancom formats

- watching korean news is farcical - every time they cut to public footage, literally 80% of the frame is blurred. I see no point in even watching the news.

- APIs and API documentation for stuff is sooooo poorly designed/written. Like, it's a f-ing joke.

- External map providers were iced out of hte market until this past year

- You need a phone number to sign up for literally anything.

There are so many more examples but these are just the ones off the top of my head. There is not an inch of breathing room for dynamism.

Koreas issues arent political. This is what happens in pure oligopolies. People on twitter love to fantasize about Korea being so technofuturistic but the truth is that the startup culture is terrible, there's no venture capital scene, and the big companies write all the rules

I had a few chances to apply for government grants in a startup. There is a lot of blind money for new techs but people managing it are simply not competent enough to understand them. Also, like some comments mentioned, tech infra around their management system is often old and very insecure.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nth_Room_case

I wonder if it’s their language that made them stick with older forum style rather than English speaking world’s apps?

I like their way more.

Also, will the AI curtail artistic activity? Things it doesn't recognize? We had watchdogs on personal expression before, one of the outcomes was "degenerate art" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degenerate_art]