One day, while I was surfing Internet sites which were about movies, I found that thousands of netizens had been debating on line about a film, Lies. Surprisingly, they were divided into people who were criticizing the movie and people who were complimenting it, because it had dilemmas. As I understood it, one of the dilemmas was that Lies had two aspects: people could treat it as pornography or as a pure artistic work, like two sides of a coin. That's why lots of netizens were separated into totally opposite sides, but the core of this argument was censorship.
        Censorship in Korea has existed for many years, from Japanese colonial days until nowadays, and it was during President Park's tyrannical term that inspection was strengthened. Even though the Japanese used to censor whatever books or newspapers they wanted to prohibit, President Park made better use of this system perfectly and strictly for his private purposes than the Japanese did. In fact, he wanted not only to have absolute control for a long time like Kim Il-sung had, but also to extend his political life. As a way of achieving his aim, he ordered censors to cut everything that disturbed his work.
        Thanks to the historical background, without doubt, some Koreans are somehow accustomed to this matter. Censoring is not a big deal for them anymore. If the board says that a movie will be ethically harmful to Korean society, people take it naturally. Conversely, others still strongly veto censorship. They regard censorship as a kind of elitism, because censors are the only people who have authority to decide whether films or publications should be released or not.
        Based on these ideas, the former say that censorship is needed as in the past, that is, to protect our young generation from obscene and violent materials. The latter insist censorship is apparently a violation of human rights according to the Constitution, so they demand it should be abolished. Personally, I understand these different points of view about censorship. It is absolutely necessary for kids. Nonetheless, there are serious problems in the Korean censoring system in every field.
        First the Korean censors don’t take into account the whole and various ideas. As things are changing, the values in life and thoughts of people are getting diverse. No wonder tastes of different level of society would ask censors to transform their practices. On the contrary, they have a tendency to stick to their original rules, as you can see in the case of Lies: even though it was invited to compete at the 56th Venice Film Festival, the Korean censorship body has not approved its release in Korea. They insist this film isn't suitable for Korean moral standards. This can't be considered reasonable.
        Secondly, the board doesn’t have any alternatives about a person who is willing to use censorship as a commercial method. Let’s say that the rating board rejects a movie for violent and sexual scenes. Then what's going to happen next? Probably the film will be reported on TV with a big sensation, stimulating the audience. If so, out of curiosity, the public are anxious to see it. That's exactly what they had in mind.
        For example, it really worked in the following cases: during the Pusan Film Festival, Lies tickets were sold out in only twenty minutes owing to the censorship issue. Can you imagine that? As another example, Suh Kap-sook's book, I Sometimes Wish to Be a Star in Pornography, a sexually explicit autobiography, sold more than 50,000 copies in the ten days after its publication. What do you think this series of phenomena stand for? In my opinion, these are the real symptoms of censorship that society has been facing lately.
        Inspection is not the best answer to keep our society and traditional culture safe, even if it is the simplest as well as the easiest way to do so. To settle this complex issue involving adolescents, the Korean government and people must make sure that children stay away from pornography. Specifically, you can block off lewd sites using software which was invented only for that particular use. Furthermore, the government and parliament might be able to pass a bill to allow adult-only cinemas.
        At the same time, I think censors should not suppress an artist's proper right to speech, publish, express his or her ideas, and so on. Such kinds of elements that I've just referred to are guaranteed in particular. Without these privileges, no one can create freely. This insistence was supported by recent judgements in which censorship was found to be illegal. Therefore inspectors should admit this point openly.
        Jang Jung-il said this before the judge sentenced him to six months in jail for writing Tell Me a Lie, which was regarded as the first "pornography" in Korean history: "If they want me to go to prison, I will. And I will write there too. I thought about stopping writing, but after this trouble, I am determined to live as a writer...." Maybe he feels that there are more alternatives in the world than censorship. If so, what might they be? Think about it, each one of you, because Korean society is not the censors; we are.