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.”

No, I’m not talking about that Yahtzee!-like practice of self-diagnosing yourself by Googling your symptoms. That’s a horrible thing to do to yourself so you should stop doing it (seriously, stop doing that). And no, I’m not talking about apps that assess any symptoms you enter and then spit out some offerings of what you could have. This is real: scientists in South Korea have developed a new technology that would enable a touchscreen – like the one attached to your smartphone – to diagnose you by simply placing a droplet of of saliva or blood onto the screen.

If you can get past the more-than-a-little gross notion of intentionally bleeding or spitting a little onto your cellphone, you may stand to benefit quite a bit. The Daily Mail reports that the scientists who created the technology claim that the recognition rate is “almost 100% accurate” with its diagnosis. In fact, one researcher anticipates that this diagnosing touchscreen-technology would even be able to diagnose serious ailments like cancer and diabetes.

The Daily Mail has an accompanying video with the story that includes further interviews with the researchers who may have just changed pathology forever. Hopefully this will eliminate the all-time most self-destructive habit in all you budding hypochondriacs out there in the world of Googling your diagnosis. Because, really. Stop. Doing. That.

According to Jay Greene at CNET, who first reported on the raids, regulators are looking int o Google’s alleged limiting of access to rival search engines on its Android platform.

Google’s statement on the matter:

“We will work with the KFTC to address any questions they may have about our business. Android is an open platform, and carrier and OEM partners are free to decide which applications and services to include on their Android phones. We do not require carriers or manufacturers to include Google Search or Google applications on Android-powered devices.”

Web search and Android are also at least parts of the reason the company is being probed by the FTC here in the U.S.

Google has a hearing with the U.S. Senate Antitrust subcommittee scheduled for September 21.

The company also faces regulatory scrutiny over its proposed acquisitions of AdMeld and Motorola Mobility.

When the FTC investigation was announced, Google laid out five principles that it says will hold up to scrutiny, which the company is likely relying on for any such regulatory scrutiny:

• Do what’s best for the user. We make hundreds of changes to our algorithms every year to improve your search experience. Not every website can come out at the top of the page, or even appear on the first page of our search results.

• Provide the most relevant answers as quickly as possible. Today, when you type “weather in Chicago” or “how many feet in a mile” into our search box, you get the answers directly—often before you hit “enter”. And we’re always trying to figure out new ways to answer even more complicated questions just as clearly and quickly. Advertisements offer useful information, too, which is why we also work hard to ensure that our ads are relevant to you.

• Label advertisements clearly. Google always distinguishes advertisements from our organic search results. As we experiment with new ad formats and new types of content, we will continue to be transparent about what is an ad and what isn’t.

• Be transparent. We share more information about how our rankings work than any other search engine, through our Webmaster Central site, blog, diagnostic tools,support forum, and YouTube. We also give advertisers detailed information about thead auction and tips to improve their ad quality scores. We’ve recently introduced even more transparency tools, announcing a major change to our algorithm, providing morenotice when a website is demoted due to spam violations, and giving advertisers new information about ads that break our rules.

• Loyalty, not lock-in. We firmly believe you control your data, so we have a team of engineers whose only goal is to help you take your information with you. We want you to stay with us because we’re innovating and making our products better—not because you’re locked in.

Miyoung Kim reported earlier today, “In their joint complaint . . . NHN Corp and Daum Communications Corp , South Korea’s top internet portals, said Google was unfairly impeding competition by using its status as a dominant smartphone operating system provider.”

More specifically, the complaint centered on the way in which Android users might find it difficult to pick something other than Google as a search provider.

Kim wrote, “Daum said the practice has helped Google enjoy a near 20 percent share of Korea’s mobile internet search market despite its market share remaining at around 2 percent in the country’s fixed-line internet segment, the smallest of major portals including NHN, Daum and Yahoo Inc.”

That’s a little different from many of the other criticisms we’ve seen surface elsewhere.  They’ve tended to focus on issues related to search rankings, advertising, Google Books, and/or restricted access to YouTube.

That doesn’t mean Google can in any way brush off the complaint, though.  Remember that South Korean police actually raided Google’s offices over its Street View data collection gaffe, and months later, determined the search giant had violated privacy laws.

Google hasn’t yet commented on the matter, and it’s hard to say when South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission might reach a decisions.

The fact that Google recorded emails and passwords sent over WiFi networks shouldn’t surprise anyone at this point; Google admitted it in October after other experts came to the same conclusion.  Also, this isn’t the first time authorities said the act violated privacy laws.

Korean police aren’t too eager to just accept Google’s apology and promise to do better, however.

An unidentified police official told the Korea Herald, "We are looking to penalize whoever ordered and developed the program . . ."

That could represent a serious PR problem for Google.  Having its engineers or execs identified as criminals would direct new attention to a problem that’s otherwise drifted out of the spotlight.  And any convictions would obviously be even worse.

But here’s something else the police official said – something that Google’s lawyers might be celebrating: "Even after we confirm the identity of the suspect, we believe it will most likely be a U.S. citizen, and it is unclear whether the Korean Police Agency can prosecute those involved."

Martyn Williams reported this morning, "Facebook is in breach of South Korean data privacy laws and needs to do a better job of getting consent from users when getting their personal information, a South Korean regulator said Wednesday."

This may not just be a matter of a missing "Accept" button or two, either.  Williams wrote, "The Korea Communications Commission . . . criticized Facebook’s handling of personal information, provision of personal information to third parties and the social-networking site’s privacy policy."

Now Facebook has 30 days to respond to the accusations, a somewhat short timespan considering the years it’s taken for Facebook’s privacy policy to reach its current state.

Either PR-wise or in terms of regulations or fines, it’s plausible this could become a significant problem for the company.  We have an email out to Facebook on the matter, and will be sure to post an update if representatives choose to reply with something beyond a polite "no comment."

Indeed, NHN CEO Kim Sang Hun stated according to Jun Yang, "We desperately need an advertising platform that’s more flexible and effective, with closer ties to the local market to respond to advertisers’ expectations promptly."

That’s pretty harsh (though in a businesslike and impersonal way).  And making the matter worse for Yahoo is the fact that some investors seem to agree, sending NHN’s stock up following the announcement.

Now, whether other companies come around to that point of view or simply fall in line as a matter of following the leader, it’s not hard to imagine those comments could cause a sort of domino effect to take place.

Jun Yang even wrote, "[Yahoo's] Overture may lose all its business in South Korea’s 1 trillion won ($836 million) online advertising market as it is replaced with local technologies, said Choi Chan Seok, a Seoul-based analyst at KTB Securities."

Anyway, Yahoo’s contract with NHN is set to expire later this year.

The move by eBay would help the online auctioneer to become a significant player in South Korea’s customer- to-customer online market by taking control of its key rival.

ebay will buy a 34.2 percent stake in Gmarket from its current top shareholder Interpark and Korean firm’s chairman, at $24 a share, according to unidentified sources.

eBay has been in talks to purchase Interpark’s stake in Gmarket since last summer. Cowen and Company analyst Jim Friedland issued a report at the time, writing, "We do not think that eBay is interested buying the entire company given its poor track record in operating wholly owned assets in Asia."

"However, we think it signals that eBay believes market share losses and margin declines at Internet Auction (eBay Korea) are irreversible and that the company is considering alternative strategies to benefit from Korean e-commerce growth."

South Korea’s antitrust watchdog gave eBay conditional approval for the deal. Gmarket currently has around 10 million registered users in South Korea. The site, along with its rival Internet Auction Co., controls 87 percent of the country’s online customer-to-customer market.

On Monday, Collins Stewart analyst Sandeep Aggarwal, downgraded eBay’s stock to a sell citing a decline in its core auction business.