Amnesty USA is reporting that Park Jeonggeun, a 24-year-old Socialist Party activist, was arrested for retweeting “long live Kim Jong-il” from North Korea’s official Twitter account. He is charged with helping “the enemy.”

Park, who claims that the re-tweet was meant to ridicule North Korea, has been in custody since January 11. He faces up to seven years in prison.

Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific Director Sam Zarifi says that this is “a sad case of the South Korean authorities complete failure to understand sarcasm.”

“Imprisoning anyone for peaceful expression of their opinions violates international law but in this case, the charges against Park Jeonggeun are simply ludicrous and should be dropped immediately,” Zarifi said.

What’s even weirder is that the South Korean Socialist Party doesn’t even like or support North Korea. They frequently criticize the communist state for exploiting its labor force, outlawing trade unions and forcing people to work under harsh conditions.

“Park is a member of a party which openly criticizes North Korea but the absurd case against him is not an isolated one. For too long South Korean authorities have been using the National Security Law (NSL) to restrict basic freedoms and gag civil society in the name of national security,” Zarifi added.

Park told Amnesty International that his intention was “to lampoon North Korea’s leaders for a joke. I did it for fun.”

Park has a history of poking fun at North Korea. He changes their propaganda posters on Twitter to replace a smiling soldier’s face with his own sad face and change the gun to a bottle of whiskey.

He disagrees with North Korean communism, but he demands he be allowed to know and learn about their culture.

“The NSL has a chilling effect on freedom of expression in South Korea. It is used not to address threats to national security, but instead to intimidate people and limit their rights to free speech. It should be reformed in line with human rights law, and if the government cannot do this, it must be abolished,” Zarifi said.

Zarifi claims that South Korea continues to use the NSL to silence opponents of the country’s view towards North Korea. Numerous arrests have allegedly been made against people for “propagating or instigating a rebellion against the state.”

There are other investigations under way in the country against those who have posted materials related to North Korea, where the police have deemed the materials to be “enemy benefitting.”

The Fair Trade Commission and The Electronic Commerce Consumer Protection Act state that consumers have one month (30 days) from the time of purchase to claim a refund. With Google and Apple holding almost 85% of the app market it would be nice to see them in compliance with the act however, these are not Korean based companies and are therefore not subject to the regulations of the Act.

While domestic providers such as SK telecom’s T store, LG Uplus’ OZ store, and KT’s Olleh Market have all been compliant with the Act, The FTC is reluctant to take measures to control competitors abroad. Losing the option of purchasing apps from providers like Google and Apple altogether as a result of trying to force compliance could be a realistic fear. Last year, the Taiwanese City of Taipei issued a fine to the Android Market for not complying with their refund policy which resulted in Google removing the services from the Taipei market altogether.

[Source: Korean Times]

According to The Korea Times, Samsung plans to file suits to block the sales of the iPhone 5 shortly after it launches in the country. They quote a “senior executive from Samsung Electronics” who says –

Just after the arrival of the iPhone 5 here, Samsung plans to take Apple to court here for its violation of Samsung’s wireless technology related patents,’’ said a senior executive from Samsung Electronics, asking not to be identified.

For as long as Apple does not drop mobile telecommunications functions, it would be impossible for it to sell its i-branded products without using our patents. We will stick to a strong stance against Apple during the lingering legal fights.

All over the world there are pending patent infringement lawsuits between Apple and Samsung. Back in April, Apple launched an attack against Samsung, saying that their products too closely resemble Apple’s products likes the iPhone and iPad. They accused them of “slavishly copying Apple’s innovative technology” instead of “pursuing independent product development.”

Samsung hit back at Apple, filing suits related to cellphone transmission technologies. As part of that suit, they petitioned to force Apple to turn over their next gen devices back in May, but a U.S. judge denied that request.

It appears that the reported future patent disputes in Korea involve this same concept, “wireless technology related patents.”

On more little nugget from this report? The Samsung sources hinted that the iPhone 5 will, in fact, sport wireless payment functionality, or the so-called NFC technology. Early rumors said that the new phone would come equipped with NFC capabilities, but later reports have quashed that speculation, saying that NFC probably won’t arrive until the generation after the iPhone 5.

An official blog post – which you can view in Korean here if you like – explained, "Twitter.com and Twitter’s mobile web site are now translated into Korean. . . .  Twitter has also updated the popular Korean versions of Twitter for Android and Twitter for iPhone."

What’s more, the post continued, "[W]e want to thank our partner Daum for displaying top Korean Tweets on their homepage and making it easy to find friends from your Hanmail address book; and LG U+ for working with us to make Twitter available via SMS in Korean for their subscribers (shortcode is #1234)."

Considering that the number of Twitter users in South Korea has already jumped tenfold over the past twelve months, these changes are likely to have a major impact.  South Korea’s fondness for tech is renowned, so assuming Twitter doesn’t bump up against a homegrown service, the adoption rate could be quite high.

That’s exciting news for Twitter’s investors and supporters.  And the development may also present the average user with the opportunity to learn more about North Korea the next time it makes headlines.

Just don’t hold your breath for the next step in Twitter’s global expansion.  Although it of course seems certain that Twitter will launch in another language sooner or later, the official blog post only set "the end of this year" as a target by which to branch out again.

According to Choe Sang-Hun, the Korean National Police Agency explained in a statement, "We intend to find out what kinds of data they have collected and how much.  We will try to retrieve all the original data illegally collected and stored through domestic Wi-Fi networks from the Google headquarters."

Then the police indicated that individuals might be held responsible for the whole mess, adding, "We will investigate Google Korea officials and scrutinize the data we confiscated today . . ."

Obviously, this looks bad for Google.  Since the company’s said it will cooperate with everyone’s investigations, the fact that the police chose to raid its offices seems to indicate there’s a significant lack of trust.

The one factor that might play in Google’s favor is the timing of this development.  Stories about its collection of sensitive WiFi data have been circulating for quite a while, after all, so the Korean National Police Agency could have acted sooner if the matter was considered a high priority.

And on that note, the KNPA didn’t provide any sort of timetable with regards to what will happen next, so it’s hard to guess how quickly the investigation will resolve itself from here.

Tim Bray announced on the Android Developers Blog, "As of today, Android Market is open for business to application buyers in the Republic of Korea. . . .  We welcome the people of Korea, acknowledged everywhere as one of the world’s most-wired societies, to the world of Android."

There’s only one small problem.  Bray also wrote, "We hope that this will make the outstanding Android devices now available in that nation even more useful and fun."  And Matt Brian reported that Android games remain off-limits in Korea due to complications with a rating system.

Still, this development represents a big step forward for Android that’s bound to make the mobile operating system significantly more appealing to consumers in Korea.  Its market share – and ability to generate revenue – should improve as a result.

It’s just too bad for Google that the company didn’t make this move earlier, considering that investors caused its stock to fall 6.97 percent the day after a somewhat weak second quarter earnings report.

Gmarket is known as Korea’s leading eCommerce business, and it will apparently be combined with eBay’s existing online marketplace in Korea, Internet Auction Company.

"The combination of Gmarket and IAC establishes an exceptionally strong leadership position for eBay in one of the world’s largest, most dynamic and innovative e-commerce markets," says eBay CEO John Donahoe said upon the original announcement. "This deal creates strong operational synergies between the two market leaders, offers more opportunities for sellers and enhances our ability to serve complementary consumer segments."

eBay shares details of the transaction:

Based on information provided by Citibank, N.A., the ADS Depositary for the tender offer, and Goodmorning Shinhan Securities Co., Ltd., the Common Share Depositary for the tender offer, a total of 50,496,693 common shares and ADSs, representing approximately 99.2% of the currently outstanding common shares and ADSs, were validly tendered and not withdrawn (including 557,006 common shares and ADSs tendered by guaranteed delivery procedures) in exchange for a purchase price of U.S. $24.00 per common share and per ADS, net to the seller in cash, without interest and less any required withholding taxes. All common shares and ADSs that were validly tendered and not withdrawn have been accepted for payment in accordance with the terms of the tender offer.

eBay also announced that it will provide a subsequent offering period of 25 business days for all common shares and ADSs that weren’t tendered in the initial offering period. that offering expires on July 20th, unless it gets an extension.

Research from IDC indicated a while back that Korea is the 6th largest eCommerce market in the world. According to those findings, only the US, Germany, the UK, China, and Japan are ahead.