Korean Star's Suicide Reignites Debate on Web Regulation

SEOUL — Choi Jin-sil, a movie star, was the closest thing South Korea had to a national sweetheart.

So when Ms. Choi, 39, was found dead in her apartment on Oct. 2 in what the police concluded was a suicide, her grief-stricken homeland sought an answer to why the actress had chosen to end her life.

The police, the media and members of Parliament immediately pointed fingers at the Internet. Malicious online rumors led to Ms. Choi's suicide, the police said, after studying memos found at her home and interviewing friends and relatives.

Those online accusations claimed that Ms. Choi, who once won a government medal for her savings habits, was a loan shark. They asserted that a fellow actor, Ahn Jae-hwan, was driven to suicide because Ms. Choi had relentlessly pressed him to repay a $2 million debt.

Public outrage over Ms. Choi's suicide gave ammunition to the government of President Lee Myung-bak, which has long sought to regulate cyberspace, a major avenue for antigovernment protests in South Korea.

Earlier this year, the Lee government was reeling after weeks of protests against beef imports from the United States. Vicious antigovernment postings and online rumors on the dangers of lifting the ban on American beef fueled the political upheaval, which forced the entire cabinet to resign.

In a monthlong crackdown on online defamation, 900 agents from the government's Cyber Terror Response Center are scouring blogs and online discussion boards to identify and arrest those who "habitually post slander and instigate cyber bullying."

Hong Joon-pyo, floor leader of the governing Grand National Party, commented, "Internet space in our country has become the wall of a public toilet."

In the National Assembly, Ms. Choi's suicide set the country's rival parties on a collision course over how to regulate the Web. The governing party is promoting a law to punish online insults; the opposition parties accuse the government of trying to "rule cyberspace with martial law."

The opposition says that cyberspace violence is already dealt with under existing laws against slander and public insults. But the government says that a tougher, separate law is necessary to punish online abuse, which inflicts quicker and wider damage on victims.

To battle online harassment, the government's Communications Commission last year ordered Web portals with more than 300,000 visitors a day to require its users to submit their names and matching Social Security numbers before posting comments.

The police reported 10,028 cases of online libel last year, up from 3,667 reported in 2004.
Harassment in cyberspace has been blamed for a string of highly publicized suicides. Ms. Choi made headlines when she married a baseball player, Cho Sung Min, in 2000. But tabloids and Web bloggers were relentless in criticizing her when the marriage soured and she fought for custody of her two children.

TV producers and commercial sponsors dropped her. The general sentiment was that her career was over.

But in 2005, she made a comeback with a hugely popular soap opera called "My Rosy Life." In it, she dropped her cute-girl image and played a jilted wife who throws a kick at her errant husband, but reconciles with him when she learns she has terminal cancer.

This year, she broke another taboo by successfully petitioning a court to change the surname of her two children to her own.

But in an interview with MBC-TV in July, which was broadcast after her death, she said she "dreaded" the Internet, where posters had insulted her for being a single, divorced mother. The police said she had been taking antidepressants since her divorce.

In South Korea, volunteer counselors troll the Internet to discourage people from using the Web to trade tips on how to commit suicide and, in some cases, how to form suicide pacts.
"We have seen a sudden rise in copycat suicides following a celebrity death," said Jeon Jun-hee, an official at the Seoul Metropolitan Mental Health Center, which runs a suicide prevention hot line. Mr. Jeon said the hot line had received 60 calls a day, or twice the usual number, since Ms. Choi's suicide.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/technology/internet/13suicide.html?ei=5070&emc=eta1&pagewanted=print ◦

Korean Star's Suicide Reignites Debate on Web Regulation

LPGA backs down on English requirement

Under increasing criticism, the LPGA Tour on Friday backed off plans to suspend players who cannot speak English well enough to be understood at pro-ams, in interviews or in making acceptance speeches at tournaments.

LPGA Tour commissioner Carolyn Bivens said she would have a revised plan by the end of the year that would not include suspensions, although fining non-English speakers remains an option.

Bivens disclosed the tour's original plan in a meeting with South Korean players two weeks ago at the Safeway Classic in Portland, Ore., Golfweek magazine reported. The policy, which had not been written, was widely criticized as discriminatory, particularly against Asian players.

The LPGA membership includes 121 international players from 26 countries, including 45 from South Korea. Asians won three of the four majors this year.

"We have decided to rescind those penalty provisions," Bivens said in a statement. "After hearing the concerns, we believe there are other ways to achieve our shared objective of supporting and enhancing the business opportunities for every tour player."

The reversal was quickly hailed by two California lawmakers who challenged the original policy.

State Sen. Leland Yee, a Democrat from San Francisco, had asked the Legislature's legal office to determine whether the English policy violated state or federal anti-discrimination laws. If it was deemed legal, Yee said he would have pushed for legislation banning such policies in California.

The LPGA Tour plays three events in California, including its first major championship.

"I'm very pleased that the LPGA saw the wisdom of the concerns that we raised," Yee said. "It's a no-brainer for those of us who have been the recipient of these kinds of discriminatory acts."

State Assemblyman Ted Lieu, a Democrat from the Los Angeles area, said he would target corporate sponsors if the LPGA persisted with its English requirement.

"I'm pleased they have come to their senses," he said.

Bivens' announcement came two hours before the Asian Pacific American Legal Center planned a news conference in Los Angeles to demand the LPGA overturn its policy.

"Until they completely retract it, issue an apology to the players and the fans, I think we'll remain very concerned and interested in what happens," said Gerald D. Kim, a senior staff attorney for the center. "The LPGA has gone about this totally the wrong way."

One of the tour's title sponsors, State Farm, already weighed in this week by saying it was "dumbfounded."

"We don't understand this and we don't know why they have done it," State Farm spokesman Kip Diggs told Advertising Age on its Web site. "And we have strongly encouraged them to take another look at this."

Bivens said the tour will continue to help international players through a cultural program that has been in place for three years and offers tutors and translators.

Earlier this week, Bivens sent a 1,200-word memo to the LPGA membership to outline the goal behind the new policy. She said players would never be required to be fluent or even proficient in English, but rather would be asked to get by with the basics of the language.

She argued that international players who could communicate effectively in English would improve the pro-am experience, sponsor relations and could help land endorsements for the players.

"We do not, nor will we ever, demand English fluency, or even proficiency, from our international players," she wrote.

"To the contrary, we are asking that they demonstrate a basic level of communication in English at tournaments in the United States in situations that are essential to their job as a member of the LPGA Tour."

Yee said he understood the tour's goal of boosting financial support, but disagreed with the method.

"In 2008, I didn't think an international group like the LPGA would come up with a policy like that," Yee said. "But at the end of the rainbow, the LPGA did understand the harm that they did."

The lawmaker said he will continue with his request to the Legislative Counsel's Office, as a way to prevent similar policies in the future.

Lieu said the LPGA's explanation made it seems as though the tour felt it more important to socialize with sponsors than to play golf.

"If you're a sports fan, you should be outraged," Lieu said. ◦

LPGA backs down on English requirement

South Korea to end ban on revealing gender of unborn children

South Korea's Constitutional Court overturned a ban on doctors telling parents the gender of unborn babies, saying Thursday the country has grown out of a preference for sons and that the restriction violates parents' right to know.

South Korea introduced the ban in 1987 to try to prevent abortions of female fetuses in a country that had traditionally favored sons in the widespread Confucian belief that males carry on family lines. Abortion has also been illegal but practiced widely.

On Thursday, the Constitutional Court said it was too restrictive to ban doctors from telling parents the gender of the unborn for the entire pregnancy because there was little chance of aborting fetuses older than six months due to risks for mothers.

"The legislation's purpose is recognized in that it helps resolve the sex-ratio imbalance and protects the fetuses' right to life," the court said in the ruling. "But it overly limits the basic rights of parents and physicians by placing a blanket ban through the latter half of pregnancy."

It also said the preference for sons has lessened to a point where the ratio of newly born boys and girls in the country has almost reached the natural level of 100 girls to 106 boys.

"Considering this, we cannot but question whether the sex-ratio imbalance is a serious social problem and whether the fetus gender notification is serving as a cause for abortion," it said.

The court ordered the law be revised to reflect the ruling by the end of next year, and said the current ban will stand until the revision. Rulings by the Constitutional Court cannot be appealed.
Judge Kim Bok-ki, who serves as the court's spokesman, said the ruling means the law should allow doctors to let parents know their babies' gender in the latter half of pregnancies.

The Korean Medical Association, the country's largest doctors' association, welcomed the ruling.

"It is natural for doctors to give patients information collected during diagnosis," the association said in a statement.

The court case began in late 2004 when a lawyer filed a petition after doctors refused to tell him the gender of his unborn baby. The following year, a doctor filed a similar suit after he was suspended for half a year for violating the ban.

A violation of the current ban is punishable by up to three years in prison and a fine of $9,830.
The ban has been enforced relatively strictly at large hospitals, but not at neighborhood clinics that offered gender information in various ways, including telling parents whether the baby is "cute" or "energetic" — allusions to girls or boys.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080731/ap_on_re_as/skorea_baby_gender_2 ◦

South Korea to end ban on revealing gender of unborn children