alt Hacker NewsI’m Korean too, but people forget that the right wing has also enforced censorship. Personally, I think the Korean right wing cries out for freedom, but in reality their ideology is rooted in the anti-communist thought of the anti-communist liberal era. I myself have somewhat negative feelings toward communism, but the so-called 'right-wing' regime in Korea is really just nostalgia for dictatorship. The current Korean administration is called 'left-wing' only because the opposition is far-right. In fact, the Korean Political History Association has long classified the 'Democratic Party'(Party name) administration as conservative. This is simply due to a poor understanding of politics[1],[2]
[1]https://www.khan.co.kr/article/202502272123025
[2]https://www.kci.go.kr/kciportal/ci/sereArticleSearch/ciSereA...
I don’t think this framing works nor is your attitude of "I'm korean I automatically know more than a foreigner who studied Korean history". It is true that Korean conservatives have used censorship and authoritarian language before such as Yoon’s 2024 martial-law attempt is the obvious recent example, and nobody serious should minimize that but that does not make the Democratic Party some neutral actor, or make censorship a uniquely partisan problem. The current ruling party's previous president, Moon Jae-in’s gov, passed laws specifically suppressing anti-North Korea leaflet and threatened activists against sending them into North Korea which the Constitutional Court later struck it down as an excessive restriction on free speech. That is a clear sign of suppressing free speech at home to directly appease an authoritarian country!
Same with media regulation in 2021, the same party tht is in power now pushed laws that directly supressed press freedom, prompting strong condemnation from Reporters without Borders and international human rights group. And lo behold you have laws now extend beyond simply press to free speech on the internet exactly as they had warned 5 years ago.
The trend of suppressing free speech continues under current admin where lawmakers passed another false-information bill allowing up to 5x damages against news orgs and independent journalist's YouTube channels, where there is no bipartisan oversight in arbitration and it is heavily in control by the ruling "democratic party".
The Korean Democratic Party is not Marxist, but seemingly have shown affinity for them from failed sunshine policy that directly enabled the development of nuclear weapons and human rights abuses with North Korea, pushing more state intervention/lawfare than any other party in history. Korean ideology does not map cleanly onto US/Europe labels and attempt to smearing conservatives to gatekeep the true political reality of Sout hKorea and its history is simply immature.