• TheAlbatross@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 year ago

      Maybe that’s why I struggle to understand why this man was jailed… in my country, 68 year old men make openly seditious statements and they get put into government.

  • GutsBerserk@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Oh, the irony. Even the democratic South Korea will act fascist and won’t allow freedom of speech.

    • Quokka@quokk.au
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      1 year ago

      South Korea was the more brutal dictatorship of the two up until the ~90s.

    • Candelestine@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      tbf, part of being democratic means your people get to decide for themselves what they will and won’t allow, they have that overriding freedom. We, for instance, could amend our constitution to remove our 1st amendment, if we so wished. It’s a power we have.

      That does not make them militaristic, aggressive, hyper-patriotic states though, which is something different.

    • NOT_RICK@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Easy to say when you’re not in a nation sharing a huge border with an actual fascist state that you’re still at war with

      • TheAlbatross@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 year ago

        The article says the poem is about yearning for a united Korea where Koreans don’t have to pay for education and healthcare and aren’t committing suicide over debts.

        Hardly seems worth sending a 68 year old man to jail for over a year.

        • LollerCorleone@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Lee Yoon-seop advocated for unification in his piece that was published in the North’s state media in 2016, South Korean media report.

          He wrote that if the two Koreas were united under Pyongyang’s socialist system, people would get free housing, healthcare and education.

          You omitted the key point here, the poem advocates for all of Korea to be united under the North Korean regime.

        • Son_of_dad@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I wouldn’t go as far as defending the poem, but going to jail over it is just stupid

  • Blue and Orange@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    You should be free to praise North Korea if you wish without fear of imprisonment. I can’t put it more bluntly than that.

  • naturalgasbad@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    Freedom of speech is when you’re allowed to say things that don’t go against government policy.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    A South Korean court has sentenced a 68-year-old man to 14 months in jail for praising the North in a poem.

    He wrote that if the two Koreas were united under Pyongyang’s socialist system, people would get free housing, healthcare and education.

    He was convicted under a law that prohibits public praise of North Korea.

    Lee had been jailed for 10 months in the past for a similar offence, The Korea Herald reported.

    In its ruling on Monday, a Seoul court said he “continued to generate and disseminate a considerable amount of propaganda that glorified and praised the North”, the Korea Herald said.

    South Korea’s National Security Act outlaws the praise and promotion of “anti-government” organisations.


    The original article contains 204 words, the summary contains 116 words. Saved 43%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • LollerCorleone@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Dude wrote a poem for the North Korean state media advocating for the unification of Korea under the ‘Pyongyang’s socialist system’. Considering that the reason for the entire Korean war and the ongoing conflict between North Korea and South Korea is that both claim to be the only legitimate government of all Korea, I can see why they would find this seditious.

      • LollerCorleone@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Jail is a bit extreme. But he is the proponent of fascist dictatorship and write poems praising it. I don’t feel much sympathy for fascists.

      • Breezy@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Idk man, if people got jailed for being openly treasonous there’d be less idiots running their mouths.

        • Son_of_dad@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Who decides what’s treason? I despise my country at the moment, it’s a piece of shit country that doesn’t deserve my praise or allegiance. So should I go to jail?

        • ilmagico@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I see you don’t like freedom of speech, at least not for people who disagree with you