Free Minerva ! Bloggers Extraordinaires

In spite of being arrested, Minerva, the South Korean blogger who predicted the collapse of Lehman's and who had a large following for his financial posts seems to have avoided being outed so far.

It was only when he started to post that Government was switching from trade in US dollars that the law went after him. South Korea is said to be one of the most internet savvy states globally and his arrest was unprecedented.

link

Forget about the internet, they still have a banned books list in South Korea. (amongst soldiers at least)

They even added 'one of their own' recently, Ha-Joon Chang "one of the world's foremost heterodox economists specialising in development economics."*


*
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ha-Joon_Chang

Quote :

Bad Samaritans has been designated by South Korean Ministry of National Defence, as one of the 23 seditious books, that South Korean Soldiers do not read. This is because it is supposedly 'Anti American'.^[11]

In an interview about this with a Korean newspaper Chang said "I
thought the concept of 'seditious books' has disappeared, and it
saddens me that censorship has been revived". He also defended his
books saying "I don't know why my book is regarded as anti-American.
The (South Korean) government is democratically elected, it changes, so
no one in a democracy can say having a different opinion from the
government of the time is unpatriotic or anti-government in general.
Indeed no democratic government can say that about criticism, only a
despotic one can". ^[12]

http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/301730.html

Quote :

In the instructions, the Air Force states that “seditious books” can
hinder soldiers’ concentration and suggested a list of 23 books to be
banned in three categories: pro-Pyongyang, anti-government and
anti-U.S., and anti-capitalism.





The blacklist also contained a considerable number of books
written by internationally-recognized scholars, books about culture,
ordinary literature and books on the best-seller list. “Bad Samaritans:
The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism,” written
by Ha-Joon Chang, a professor at the University of Cambridge, is a
best-seller that was selected as one of the 10 best books of the year
by many media companies. Hyeon Gi-yeong's novel “A Spoon on Earth” was
classified as pro-North Korea and “Year 501: The Conquest Continues” by
Noam Chomsky was classified as anti-government and anti-U.S.

(as an aside I proposed Bad Samartians as one of the MN reads during the year....seditious..!)

Do you have a copy Pax? If there was interest in reading it, would you be up for talking us through it in the Book Club?


They seem very sensitive about the dollar.