South Korean experience on how to use web resources for nonviolent campaigns

How to utilize the Internet for our activities

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South Korea’s Internet infrastructure is the most highly developed in the world. People can easily access to high-speed broadband at home, work, school, library, government and public offices, even restaurants and cafes. Of course there are many problems that the Internet may also be misused and have disastrous impacts on our daily lives, such as invasion of privacy, leakage and abuse of personal information, and hacking. The clear fact is that, however, the Internet is already a necessity for daily life in Korea, especially for young people. They use the internet in various areas, such as internet banking, internet shopping, online stock trading, online education etc. Cyber culture in Korea has unique phenomenon, for example, online bulletin board system, which is very popular in Korea and used in every portal sites, is not very common in other countries. Popular portal sites already have a great influence on Korean society and public opinion formed on the internet through these kinds of portal sites play an important role in the public opinion in Korean society.

KSCOs' website http://www.corights.net

Thus, it is important to find best ways to utilize the internet to promote our activities. Most NGOs or groups run and make the most use of web-site to introduce their work and to communicate with members or public. Korea Solidarity for Conscientious Objection(KSCO, www.corights.net) has been hold a signature-seeking campaign for demanding to recognize rights of conscientious objection and ran secret board on KSCO’s website to provide counseling for young people, considering their conscientious objection. Since 2004, we made an on and off-line guide book which explain about conscientious objection to military service process from deciding to imprisonment and releasing and now the guide book replaced the secret board. JinboNet(http://www.jinbo.net) is a portal site of progressives. Various kinds of NGOs’ websites are linked with JinboNet. JinboNet provides current news on progressives’ activities, links to different blogs and mailing list service and play a role in networking with various kinds of groups and activities.

Initiative’s website http://www.corights.net/brokenrifle

Following example of KSCO’s Day Campaign illustrates how we utilize the Internet for our activities. Volunteers are one of the key factors for any successful campaign. Volunteers are recruited in a various ways. First, all 36 organizations working with KSCO post a notice for volunteer recruiting on each of their websites. Also e-mails are sent to people who are on the mailing list, and the advertisement is posted on imprisonment COs’ personal support groups’ websites, blogs on the JinboNet.

While gathering people and forming the initiative, we create a website for the KSCO’s day campaign, which provides information on our mission, activities, events for public. This website is also good for communication among participants of the campaign. The website is constantly updated even after the campaign. News articles, photos, comments from the campaign participants are posted on the bulletin board, helping people to communicate to one another. This websites is advertised and hyperlinked on other NGO’s websites to provide easy access. After building website and setting outline of the campaign through on and off-line meetings, we make and distribute web-poster which is made of various kinds of images or messages with humor to catch people’s eyes and inform our campaign effectively. Making and distributing of these web-posters are repeated 2 or 3 times. Typically the first poster focuses on informing the title of campaign, time and place. The second one describes contents of campaign, and the third poster introduces the history of ‘Prisoners for Peace Day’. All these web-posters are hyperlinked to the campaign website. Where we place our advertisements are closely related to special features on each campaign. For instance, one of the main events we perform on every ‘Prisoners for Peace Day campaign’ is riding bike from Congress to Yeongdeungpo Jail and we put this web-poster on online bicycle communities’ websites. Besides these kinds of activities, we use various kinds of online media to publicize our campaign. We distribute a description of the event and contact the press to feature our campaign. We also contribute articles related to the event to media.