At most four Korean Wikipedians are charged with defamation of Song Young-gil, the Mayor of Incheon Metropolitan City.
According to the contributors, the prosecution is upon the Song's own request, and is going to be over publicizing a fabricated sex scandal in the article about him and (semi-)protecting it. The text in question is merely a sum-up of various reports about the speculations eventually found to be a hoax. Non-logged-in user(s) from various IP addresses have tried to remove the whole controversy section, including not only the scandal but other arguments about him, replacing it with personal contrary comments and legal threats. The edits are consequently reverted by some users and rollbacked by one administrator. The admin, [[ko:User:Kys951]], is also accused of being an abettor just because he is an admin. In the South Korean legal system, criminal defamation is partially a "crime upon complaint," (친고죄/親告罪) which becomes irrelevant to be a crime when the complainant chose to withdraw the case. (Note that I'm not a specialist of law, especially in English terminology.) The police of Southeastern Incheon thought the case itself is too insignificant to be a criminal case and tried to persuade him to withdraw it, only to be declined. Song has reportedly demanded the admin to remove the paragraph in exchange for fixing the charge, which is definitely not the way how Wikipedia works. Another concern about this incident is that this could happen to every bit of contribution to the project. South Korean government had been censoring any scribble on the web they think beneficial to North Korea,[2] and for later on, anything they think "fraudulent" whenever the state is in "threat," according to an exclusive report.[3] [1] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ko/w/index.php?title=%EC%86%A1%EC%98%81%EA%B8%B8&diff=5832689 [2] http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/shame_on_democratic_south_korea_for_censoring_face.php [3] http://www.hani.co.kr/arti/economy/it/455022.html _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
