Aju Business Daily

SEOUL -- South Korea's media regulation body shrugged off concerns about strengthened state censorship to push ahead with the blocking of hundreds of illegal or harmful websites accused of providing adult contents such as revenge pornography and gambling with servers based mainly in foreign countries.

At issue is server name indication (SNI) technology used by the Korea Communications Commission (KCC) to block off 776 gambling websites, 96 porno sites and 11 sites related to intellectual properties, which have used a secure web protocol called "https (hypertext transfer protocol over secure sockets layer)."

Https is an extension of the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP), which is not encrypted and vulnerable to man-in-the-middle and eavesdropping attacks. Https is designed to withstand such attacks.

The crackdown began on Monday when domestic internet service providers were ordered to block access to illegal websites, triggering online protests. Users and experts expressed concerns that communication information control by government officials and network operators could become stronger than before.

"The SNI field is not encrypted, but it is the domain that originally exists for secure access. It is inadequate to place the scope of this security objective under management, control and authority for regulatory purposes," Open Net, an online civic group, said in a statement, supported by a majority of online community users.

The commission refused to back off, saying the crackdown is not related to censorship because the unencrypted SNI field is not in an area in which communication secret should be protected under law. SNI is a network protocol extension that checks the hostname of a website when a person or a computer tries to gain access to it.

"It cannot be viewed as an infringement on freedom of expression," the watchdog said in a statement on Thursday, adding its move is irrelevant to the eavesdropping that confirms communication contents because connection is blocked mechanically like spam blocking.

Similar action has been taken to stop people from visiting websites containing harmful contents, but that could be bypassed using simple tricks. This time, the watchdog used SNI that completely blocks access to domain name servers.

A public petition posted on the presidential website on February 11 expressed worries that the watchdog's move could trigger indiscriminate internet censorship. However, the petitioner agreed that the distribution of revenge pornography and other materials with copyrights should be stopped.

The petition has been supported by about 195,000 people as of Friday morning. If it garners more than 200,000 supporters, the presidential office should give an answer. The petitioner argued that the commission's restrictive actions are not effective because people will eventually find a way to bypass regulations.