NK News, a Washington, D.C.-based website focused on North Korea, has been partially blocked in South Korea for violating the National Security Law (NSL), authorities confirmed Monday.
"We've received some complaints saying, ‘Can we have our money back? Half the website isn't working.' That puts us in a difficult situation, all because of this archaic law from the 1940s," Chad O' Carroll, managing editor of NK News told The Korea Times from London.
The restriction by the Korea Communications Standards Commission (KCSC), enforced since October, reignited a long-running debate over the controversial law.
Officials here say that accessing material from North Korea is not problematic; however, spreading such material violates the NSL and has resulted in arrests.
The block affects a feature on the website called "KCNA Watch," which extracts content from Pyongyang's state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) website in Korean, English and Chinese and turns it into data such as graphs. It provides access to KCNA articles dating back to 1997.
According to the KCSC, the block came after a "substantial part of the content" was filed for review by the National Police Agency (NPA). Upon examination of the website, the commission found the content violated the NSL, a KCSC official said on condition of anonymity.
"The KCSC advocates the value of freedom of speech and the protection of individual rights. At the same time, we also stand to create a safer Internet culture and to uphold the law," he said.
Bernhard Seliger, resident representative of the Hanns-Seidel Foundation Korea, a German group with engagement projects in North Korea, suggested that the South has outgrown the law.
"South Korea is a very successful economic and political (democratic) model and has nothing to fear from some (admittedly often bizarre) ‘information' from the North," he said in an email.
Some, however, maintain that the law is necessary.
"We should not forget that North and South Korea are still technically at war," Kwon Eun-kyoung, international affairs manager with Open Radio for North Korea, was quoted as saying in an Oct. 28 article on NK News.
"North Korea's propaganda activities towards South Korea and the world are still working, but South Korea has not got many means to cope with it."
The "KCNA Watch" function is important to researchers, O' Carroll said, because North Korean media websites are difficult to navigate and unreliable.
He says this was underscored last month following the deadly purge of Jang Song-thaek, a high ranking official and uncle of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. In the aftermath, Pyongyang deleted articles about Jang and edited others to remove his name.
O' Carroll pointed out that other popular North-focused sites had not been blocked.
NK News "does give people access to KCNA, theoretically...but it's not really being designed for propaganda purposes," he said. "It's unfortunate because we want to be as accessible as possible in South Korea."