Pemko Operator's Angry Statement on Community Crackdown

System Monitor

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Hello. This is the FM Korea operations and technical team system monitor. Recently, the site has been under attack from multiple vectors, and separately, there's been ongoing controversy over the expansion of AI pre-censorship. 1. The fairness issue between overseas platforms and domestic companies. Currently, large overseas platforms are not subject to the same level of domestic laws and regulations as domestic companies. In particular, X and Telegram are services that government officials use unusually frequently. Meanwhile, even though Telegram was a platform critically used in the N-room incident, it was exempted from the mandatory illegal filming pre-screening system application unlike domestic companies. X also has almost no domestic law applied to it in terms of illegal filming filtering, adult content access restrictions, and processing deletion requests from domestic users. Yet government officials are using X and Telegram even more. X actually didn't take measures to prevent illegal filming distribution, so it was fined 15 million won, which is almost meaningless to a global giant corporation. Domestic companies are being strongly pressured, while foreign companies that are difficult to apply the same standards to are left alone—this structure keeps repeating. This method can only result in weakening domestic companies and strengthening foreign ones.

FM Korea is a domestic service that receives on-site inspections and audits every year from multiple related organizations including the Broadcasting and Communications Commission. In fact, the Broadcasting and Communications Commission visits every year to conduct inspections. FM Korea has always actively cooperated with official requests from government agencies regarding problematic matters. If relevant government agencies had guided us to "stop due to problems" or "improve due to problems," we would have immediately stopped or improved the controversial surplus transmission or prediction system.

It's difficult to accept as an easily understandable procedure for pressure to come in the form of a high-handed national audit and police investigation against a site that receives on-site inspections from the Broadcasting and Communications Commission every year.

In fact, before the national audit and police investigation, we never received any official inquiries, warnings, or contact from the Broadcasting and Communications Commission or any other government agency regarding gambling controversies.

Generally, I understand that investigations are supposed to be conducted within 2 months of a report, but about 10 months have passed since the gambling controversy-related investigation report, and we're only now undergoing full-scale investigation.

The admins don't intervene in NAVER's user tendencies regarding freedom of expression and the issue of targeting specific communities. In the past, there were periods with different tendencies, and it's a place where majority opinions naturally change according to user complaints and social atmosphere. This is what a community with freedom of expression actually looks like. It's normal for users to freely express opinions, debate, and sometimes change their stances. However, if at a certain point in time, claims emerge that a specific community should be sanctioned or regulated simply because its public opinion doesn't suit someone's taste, this is a threat to freedom of expression. Illegal posts should obviously be sanctioned. However, if we nitpick at posts with barely any views just because we don't like a community's tendency, pressure domestic companies, and don't apply the same standards to overseas platforms, this isn't fair regulation. What's needed isn't beating up domestic companies we don't like, but fair standards. A structure where only domestic companies are regulated, only domestic companies bear costs, and only domestic companies are subjects of investigation and parliamentary audits ultimately weakens the domestic internet ecosystem. Conversely, it only increases the influence of overseas companies. NAVER FM isn't saying it won't follow the law. It's not saying it'll ignore illegal posts. However, we can't agree to ineffective mandatory pre-censorship, non-functional exception handling, regulation without equity, and targeting.

Freedom of expression should be guaranteed equally everywhere. Even in places where opinions that some people dislike gather, that principle should remain the same. It should be guaranteed equally even in places where disliked opinions congregate.

I think that's the bare minimum principle in a democratic society. Government officials are actively using X or Telegram, which largely ignore domestic laws, while ironically discriminating against and pressuring domestic companies that try to comply with domestic laws in various ways to grow foreign companies. We need to think about whether this is really right.

Recently I've been targeted so heavily that I'm forced to release an official statement.

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