The Cheonan Dilemmas and the Declining Freedom of Expression in South Korea

With regard to the cause of the tragic sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan in March 2010, the Lee Myung-bak government’s treatment of inconclusive evidence for a North Korean torpedo attack as dispositive and its hardline actions such as the "5-24 measures" created multiple dilemmas for the conservative government. The conservative government responded to the widespread doubts and questions about its investigation with intensifying suppression of free speech. As a result, international ratings of press freedom and internet freedom for South Korea were downgraded, notably from "Free" to "Partly Free" by the Freedom House. The government primarily relied on national security rhetoric in order to isolate the critics from the public, but their primary legal tools for prosecution of critics were not the National Security Law but criminal defamation and internet regulations. Many critics of the government’s Cheonan investigation are still going through criminal trials, but ironically those defendants are on the offensive in the courts while the prosecutors and accusers are on the defensive. The conservative Park Keun-hye government inherits the Cheonan legacies. Both improvement in inter-Korean relations and resumption of the Six-Party Talks are still hostage to the South Korean government’s insistence on a North Korean apology for the Cheonan sinking, for which the North vehemently denies its responsibility. It will be an important challenge for the Park Keun-hye government to devise an exit strategy from the Cheonan hostage of inter-Korean relations and to respect freedom of speech for domestic critics.