표현의 자유 억압과 방송법

Abstract

Freedom in spiritual areas, such as the rights to free speech and press, free assembly and association, and academic freedom and artistic freedom, means that anyone can oppose to or challenge the dominant value, ideology or order without being punished or threatened to be punished. Spiritual freedoms are those of dissent. Nonetheless, we are now facing a power that tries to or does trample on those precious human rights. Lee Myung-Bak administration has been unfolding lots of suppressive policies against freedom of expression, a freedom of dissent, both entirely and all at once. I intend to expose the ultimate end of those steps that I guess is to deny or eliminate a public forum in which important issues are discussed openly and freely. In the course of the process, I surveyed how those policies have been processed, and what are the unique characteristics of them. For this purpose I focused on the intent of the government to revise the Broadcasting Act. The governmental bill has two core purposes: permitting the cross-ownership between newspaper and broadcasting and eliminating the barriers against big corporations’ entrance into news-broadcasting industry. Both of them would result in standardized public opinion, which in turn would open up a path to Fascism. Considering the importance of the bill, the response thereto on the part of democratic movement has been very disappointing. Rather, we should be blamed for failing to link the cause of mass candle demonstration to institutional reforms. Nonetheless, we cannot and must not give up. Isn’t it the responsibility of those in Democratic Legal Studies, to provide a legal weapon to those who are fighting for democracy and human rights against the oppressive government? Isn’t it still worthwhile to arm the people with legal legitimacy, to help them find a loophole of the ‘law and order’ reasoning, and to show and share a vision for defeating the governmental brutality and winning a victory in the near future?