During his riveting ’15-seconds’ online, he was considered a prophet who first saw the coming economic crisis and was among the first to criticize the Lee Myung Bak Administration’s weak economic policies.  But shortly after the arrest of Park Dae Sung, 31, who used the online moniker Minerva, the public has become divided over his contribution to public discourse. 

Some viewed the unemployed 30-something with two years of vocational college as a champion of Internet free speech, and others, his opponents, viewed him as something between an online charlatan or worse, a cyber-terrorist.  

He’s out of the courts now, acquitted of the government’s charges that he spread false information with the intent to damage the public interest.  The courts ruled that while his posts were both incorrect and others correct, there was no evidence that he knew when he was wrong or that he had malicious intent.

Internet freedom watchers, nevertheless, say that the acquittal does not undo the damage to civil liberties wrought by the government’s arrest of Park in January, citing  the chilling effect caused by the prospect of arrest.

New York Times reporter Choe Sang Hun picks up the story from there:

“Mr. Park’s evolution from a former employee of a wireless communications company to a national sensation to an embittered outcast reads like a case study of what can happen to an unprepared blogger in this highly wired, and politically divisive, society.” 

Read the rest at [NY Times]

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