At the UN, the British Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant, who holds the presidency of the Security Council for the month of November, told journalists that he was having consultations among Security Council members on Korea and the consultations would continue. It was Wednesday afternoon at the stakeout at the UN Security Council. It was the day before the American celebration of Thanksgiving. The Security Council had met for consultations on another matter, but a number of journalists came to the stakeout to hear if the Security Council had any plans about what it would do about the increased hostilities on the Korean peninsula. The British Ambassador didn’t take any questions from journalists so there was little communication about what was being planned at the Security Council.

Ban Ki-moon’s Response

Just a few hours after the hostilities had erupted between the two Koreas on November 23, UN Secretary General Ban ki-moon… weiter lesen

The challenge of Security Council reform has been on the agenda at the United Nations for decades with little obvious effect on the workings of the Security Council itself.(1)

But what happens when an action of the Security Council is an improvement over past Security Council practices and presents an important model for conflict resolution in line with the obligations of the Charter? Will there be recognition of the peaceful direction that the action points in or will it be ignored and members of the Security Council revert back to the practice of the past?

The situation I am referring to is the consideration by the Security Council of the sinking of the South Korean naval warship, the Cheonan. The dispute over the sinking of the Cheonan was brought to the Security Council in June and a Presidential Statement was agreed to in July.

An account of some… weiter lesen

Part I – Netizen Journalism Panel: The Internet, Netizens, and Journalism

[Note: In October, 2008 there was a panel about Netizen Journalism at the 9th annual conference of Internet researchers (IR9.0 is the tag) which was held in Copenhagen. Following is an abstract for the panel, and then a summary that Axel Bruns posted on his blog of the session. A slightly edited version of one of the talks at the panel, my talk about Candlelight 2008 in South Korea as an example of Watchdog Journalism, is online in an earlier post on my blog.]

In his pioneering research about the impact of the Internet, Michael Hauben recognized that the nature of the Net made possible a new form of citizenship, a participatory form that is oriented toward a public purpose. He called the people who were developing this new form of citizenship, netizens.(1)

What would be the… weiter lesen

[This is a slightly edited version of a talk given in Copenhagen on 10-17-08 at the 9th annual conference of the Association of Internet Researchers (The tag for the conference is IR9.0)]

This year, 2008 is the 15th anniversary of the publication of the “Net and Netizens” by Michael Hauben on the Internet in the summer of 1993. Michael posted this paper in parts because it was fairly long. It was based on research he had done about the Internet by asking people questions about how they were using the Net in that period of the early 1990s. Also at the time there was some use of the term net.citizen on the net. Michael contracted the term net.citizen into the term netizen. Based on the responses and his analysis of them Michael put together a paper defining what he called the netizen.

His paper was spread around the Net by… weiter lesen

Some scholars who study South Korean politics have observed that the conservative media presents a particular problem for those who are interested in democratic development. The conservative media, they argue, provides a support structure for the conservative political interests which must be challenged if there is to be a more democratic political structure developed in South Korea. (1)
Recently, large protests in the form of candlelight demonstrations have taken place in South Korea. Directed against the neoliberal policies of the Lee Myung-bak government, they have continued for over two months. The candlelight vigils began on May 2. Since then candlelight vigils, often followed by round the clock open public meetings and demonstrations, have been common.

Describing these demonstrations and the online communication that helped make them possible, Kim Dae-jung, a former president of South Korea, observed (3):
“We are experiencing an extraordinary phenomenon in Korea. We are… weiter lesen