Some forms of online parody might be alive and well in South Korea. But don’t even joke about liking North Korea.
A South Korean man who had been arrested for ironically retweeting North Korean propaganda was handed a suspended 10-month prison sentence Wednesday.
Park Jeong-Geun, 24, had been arrested on Jan. 11 for his Twitter activity, despite repeatedly insisting his tweets were simply to mock the North Korean government: After former North Korean ruler Kim Jong Il died in Dec. 2011, Park tweeted he wanted to send “uranium and plutonium” as a show of sympathy, the New York Times reported. A North Korean propaganda poster in which a soldier holds a gun. Park’s Twitter avatar is himself in a similar pose, but holding a bottle of scotch.
But even though judge Shin Jin-woo admitted that at least some of Park’s praise was in jest, he still declared that Park violated the country’s National Security Law, which broadly forbids “praising, encouraging or propagandizing” their neighbors to the north.
Citing 100 times Park retweeted clear North Korean propaganda like “Long Live Kim Jong-il!”, Shin said Park’s Twitter feed was tantamount to “supporting and joining forces with an antistate entity.” His suspended sentence is the equivalent of a probation period, during which time Park has agreed to cease such Twitter activity.
Human rights groups have heartily condemned South Korea’s treatment of Park, and a there’s a popular South Korean petition condemning his initial arrest.
Park, for his part, has taken to tweeting material presumably less offensive to his government. As of Thursday, he reported on Twitter, he was watching the 1989 James Bond movie License to Kill.
Photos via Wikimedia Commons and @seouldecadence/Twitter
