Official name: "Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning" (미래창조과학부)

Finally, the government has announced the official English name for the new super ministry that has been the subject of numerous earlier posts.  As reported by Yonhap News Agency and other media, it is the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning.
The new ministry has also published a Korean language web site (view it at this link), with some pages still under construction.

More on the nature of Korea's cyber-war

Tensions on the Korean peninsula are at a high level, thanks in no small part to the manner in which news is disseminated in the new, digitally networked environment in which we live.   Yesterday I watched most of a "Situation Room" special on the Korean situation on CNN.  The segments were informative, featuring interviews with various experts and a lot of current or recent video taken within North Korea.  Inevitably one of the topics was the "cyber-war" that is taking place alongside the "real world" by the U.S., South Korean and North Korean military, among other actors.  Although like many people, I get much of my news over the internet, I still watch television news (CNN, the BBC, Korean news channels, etc.) and value its immediate and visual character. The "Situation Room" special actually showed segments of the video that the hacking group, Anonymous, posted to YouTube.  A screen capture of that video was published yesterday by The Joongang Daily (click on the graphic at left to see a full size version)
The Joongang Daily also published some interesting detail about the information made public by Anonymous after it hacked the North Korean site "Uriminzokkiri."  As I noted in a short post yesterday, that information included records of the web sites 9,001 members, about 5,000 of whose e-mail addresses appeared to be in South Korea.  The article included the breakdown of those addresses as shown in the graphic below (click to see a larger version) .
The Joongang Daily Article also noted that the police, prosecutors and the National Intelligence Service (NIS) were checking whether the South Korean members had violated the nation's national security law. "If a South Korean exchanged messages with Pyongyang after becoming a member of the Web site, it would be a violation of the NSL’s Article No. 8, which prohibits people from communicating with people in the North and which can be punished with up to 10 years in prison. Posting words or images that praise North Korea is a violation of Article No. 7 and can be punished with a jail term of up to seven years, according to the NIS."   The national security law is the main reason why South Korea ranks high on internet filtering as measured by the Open Net Initiative, but only in the political category, as noted in an earlier post.

Anonymous hacks North Korean "Uriminzokkiri" web site

The cyber conflict involving the two Koreas took a new twist recently when the international hacking group Anonymous hacked an official North Korean web site,"Uriminzokkiri" . As noted by the Korea Joongang Daily, "Anonymous, a so-called “hacktivist” group, said it hacked into the pro-North Web site uriminzokkiri.com in order to tell Pyongyang to stop threatening the world and to warn North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to step down and give his people freedom. It leaked records of the Web site’s 9,001 members on Thursday including names, user IDs, dates of birth, e-mail addresses and genders. About 5,000 of the e-mail addresses were from South Korea."

The importance of a name for the new Future Ministry (미래창조과학부)

Not surprisingly, the question of the name for the new Future Ministry (미래창조과학부) continues to be debated in the local press, for reasons I've touched on in several earlier posts.  Today The Korea Times carried an article on the topic.   Some papers have been calling it the Ministry of Future Planning and Science, even though the word "planning" is not part of the Korean name.  Presumably this is because candidate Ahn Cheol-soo proposed a Ministry of Future Planning, while campaigning for the presidency last Fall.   For background on that, see this Hankyoreh article.

Why the new super ministry nominee with drew (미래창조가학부)

The English papers in Seoul are all covering the Washington Post opinion piece in which the Park Geun-hye administration's initial nominee to head the new Future Ministry (미래창조과학부) explained his reasons for withdrawing from the nomination process.  That editorial said in part "Change-resistant forces in the political and bureaucratic circles and certain business spheres naturally raised objections to my candidacy, mostly on the basis of my nationality and presumed lack of allegiance. A vitriolic response I can only liken to a witch hunt took off on the Internet and even in some mainstream media outlets. I was slandered. Some, for example, theorized that I was a spy. Family was considered fair game: My wife was accused of being associated with a brothel."  Near the end of the article, he says "In the 21st century, the most successful countries and economies will be those that can move beyond the old prejudices concerning nationality." In response to the Washington Post piece, The Joongang Ilbo published an article headlined "Park's former nominee decries excess nationalism," while The Korea Herald's article bore the headline "Failed minister nominee makes bitter attack on Korea's old prejudices."  The reactions are as one would expect, but provide some food for thought about this nation's role in an ever more closely-knit "global village."