For five years, South Korean internet users have been unable to anonymously leave comments on local sites. At one time, the law on disclosure of data caused a storm of indignation both in the country and around the world. In 2012, Koreans finally regained the right to anonymity.
The controversial Internet Real-Name System law was enacted to combat cybercrime and to reduce the amount of defamation and offensive comments that South Koreans were pouring out on South Koreans via the World Wide Web. According to statistics, the number of bullying and threats was 13.9% of the total number of messages written by citizens of South Korea.
The law ordered the administrators of South Korean resources, which were visited by more than a hundred thousand people per day, to find out the true data of visitors using their IP addresses. Also, system administrators had to disclose the data of users who published threatening comments or revealed the privacy of other participants in the discussion.
However, the authorities failed to make the Internet space more friendly. South Korean Internet users, in order to maintain their anonymity, simply switched to foreign web resources, while the popularity of domestic sites fell to the limit. At the same time, the number of offensive comments decreased by only 0.9%.
As a result, on August 24, 2012, the Constitutional Court of South Korea overturned the data disclosure law, according to other countries, violating the freedom of speech in the country, guaranteed by the constitution. According to the court ruling, the repealed law prevented the formation of pluralism of opinion, which is the basis of democracy. South Korea's home internet association strongly supported the Constitutional Court's ruling. Now there is a hope that South Korea will be excluded from the list of "enemies of the Internet", having got there in 2007 for severely restricting freedom of speech of users of the worldwide network.
