Category: Bloggers & Blogging

We have all probably made online posts we regret and would later delete.  What if the service you left the posting on would not delete it?  In Korea it may become law that postings that people wanted removed have to be deleted.  Even if this does become a law it just seems like it would be extremely difficult to enforce if the content is kept on servers outside of Korea:

But it was not until 2014 that the Korea Communications Commission (KCC), a media regulation agency, took further steps to discuss the concept, following the European Court of Justice’s landmark ruling for a right to be forgotten.

The result of years of consultations came in the form of a guideline last month, which will go into effect next month. But the guideline, though much anticipated, faces controversy for its blurry standards and lack of specific directions for implementation. Still, proponents support the notion of a right to be forgotten for purposes of privacy and personal dignity.

Unlike the decision by the European Union’s top court, the KCC’s guidelines primarily concern online users’ own posts rather than articles posted by a third party, since Korean law already grants people the right to request the deletion of information by a third party if it is deemed damaging to one’s reputation. And yet the guidelines seek to expand on the right to be forgotten, since it orders Internet companies to accept removal requests in some “exceptional cases” that formerly blocked or limited the original writer’s autonomy over their content.

“People sometimes face trouble accessing and deleting their own posts for different reasons,” said Choi Yoon-jeong, director of the privacy protection and ethics division at the KCC. “For instance, when a platform bans the deletion of a post by a user who has lost his or her ID or password. The guidelines are designed to ensure users’ rights under precisely these kinds of circumstances.”  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

Site traffic has been down a little bit in August probably because of UFL preventing all the USFK personnel and contractors from sitting in their office all day reading blogs.  Isn’t that what we all do at work?  This may also be why Australian viewers have surpassed South Korea for the second most visits to my site last month.  Also I like to say welcome to the ROK Drop to all the new Canadian readers out there as Canadians have broken into the Top 5 of ROK Drop readership last month. Finally thanks to all my Top Referrers for recommending the ROK Drop.  Have a good week.  

July ROK Drop Statistics (Note: Stats from Bluehost Awstats)

ROK Drop   Uniques    Visits        Pages                 
Average        329          1000.35    5004     
Per Day

Top Five Countries Visiting ROK Drop for July
1. United States
2. Australia
3. South Korea
4. E.U.
5. Canada

Top Referrers
1. Marmot’s Hole (Last month #1)
2. Lost Nomad  (Last month #2)
3. DPRK Studies (Last Month #5)
4. Milblogs (Last Month #4)
5. Japan Probe (Last Month Unranked)

Top 10 Searched for Key Phrases
1. computers internet blog
2. rok drop
3. korean missionaries in afghanistan
4. korea
5. rokdrop
6. false
7. Korean hostage update
8. jimmy yip california
9. lee pani
10.23 korean missionaries

Top Five Posts for the Month of July
1. USFK Soldier Sentenced and Convicted in Grandma Rape Case
2. ROK Army Sexual Assault Update
3. Suicide Bomber Kills Korean Servicemember in Afghanistan
4. Korean Government Warns USFK Commander Over "Undiplomatic" Remarks
5. Remembering Hiroshima

Note: You can see the top overall posts on my sidebar.

Site traffic has continued to build this month with total uniques up by over 1,500 and total visits up by over 5,000 compared to June.  The hostage crisis has brought in plenty of visitors, but the grandma rape case post continues to get high traffic as well from people searching for grandma rape on search engines.  Some really disturbing people out there.   I would like to thank my top referrers and everyone else reading the site.  Have a good weekend. 

July ROK Drop Statistics

ROK Drop   Uniques    Visits        Pages                 
Average        442            1477        4974     
Per Day

Top Five Countries Visiting ROK Drop for July
1. United States
2. South Korea
3. E.U.
4. Netherlands
5. Australia

Top Referrers
1. Marmot’s Hole (Last month #2)
2. Lost Nomad  (Last month #1)
3. Dave’s ESL Cafe (Unranked)
4. Milblogs (Last Month #4)
5. DPRK Studies (Last Month #3)

Top 10 Searched for Key Phrases
1. Korean missionaries in Afghanistan
2. Korean missionaries Afghanistan
3. gi korea
4. rokdrop
5. Korean missionary Afghanistan
6. lee pani
7. Korean missionary taliban
8. missionaries in Afghanistan
9. xk2
10.jill metzger

Top Five Posts for the Month of July
1. USFK Soldier Sentenced and Convicted in Grandma Rape Case
2. Taliban Kidnaps Korean Missionaries in Afghanistan
3. Korean Missionary Kidnapping Update
4. ROK Army Sexual Assault Update
5. Suicide Bomber Kills Korean Servicemember in Afghanistan

Note: You can see the top overall posts on my sidebar.

I have decided to start doing monthly update on how well the ROK Drop blog has been doing and recognizing my top referrers.  Since I moved my site over to WordPress last December traffic to site has slowly been building month by month.  I appreciate everyone who stops by and reads what I have to think about things and appreciate many of the great comments left by readers..

June ROK Drop Statistics

ROK Drop   Visits        Pages         Hits            Bandwidth
Average        1265.03     3814.10     14566.43   320.84mb  

Top Ten Countries Visiting ROK Drop for June
1. United States
2. South Korea
3. Australia
4. Sweden
5. Canada

Note: You can see my overall top country visitors on my sidebar.

Top Referrers
1. Lost Nomad
2. Marmot’s Hole
3. DPRK Studies
4. Occidentalism
5. Milblogs

Thanks to all my top referrers for linking and sending traffic to the ROK Drop. 

Top 10 Searched for Key Phrases
1. ROK Drop
2. GI Korea
3. Michelle Wie
4. rokdrop
5. XK2 tank
6. lee pani
7. abortion in korea
8. xk2
9. yuko tojo
10. lee sabi

Top Five Posts for the Month of June
1. USFK Soldier Sentenced and Convicted in Grandma Rape Case
2. The Solution to Indiscipline Problems Found
3. Filipino Diplomat Caught Shoplifting in USFK PX
4. Korea’s Looks to Add to UNESCO Sites, Is Dokdo Next?
5. Japan’s Lawmakers Take Out Full Page Ad on Comfort Women

Why a post from this past March on the Grandma Rape Case has received so much traffic this month is beyond me.  Hits for posts on Dokdo and comfort women is not to surprising. 

I you haven’t seen them yet, Jack Hanna Nomad has some great pictures of a wildlife encounter during one of his fishing trips.

Highly recommend everyone go and read Michael Yon’s posting on Memorial Day. 

Over at imbedded reporter Bill Roggio’s site one of his guest posters, a former intelligence analyst, has a good posting about the operational security issue that was raised last week concerning the milblogging community.  As it turns out the Pentagon and their public affairs offices are the biggest OPSEC violators of all:

The worst OPSEC violator in the senior staffs is the Pentagon. I get more advance notice from a Pentagon Press Brief of US movements from Kuwait into Iraq than I get from all other sources combined. The Pentagon acts as if it is not at war, and the leaks emanating from Arlington are enormous.

This is quite obvious just from the number of leaks from the Pentagon to newspapers like the New York Times releasing classified information.  What was interesting about the posting though was that Korean Zaytun unit in Irbil is considered to be the best unit in Iraq in regards to operational security:

1. Multinational Division-North East/Zaytun Division (Republic of Korea Army): The best in-theater OPSEC. Period. The only thing I see from their AOR is what new project or jobs training is ongoing. Unit identification of coalition/Iraqi Security Forces below Division does not get released by the Koreans. I get my data on Iraqi Security Forces in that area from US PAO releases and briefs.

He is right that reconstruction projects all you pretty much all you hear from the Zaytun unit, but there has been other bits of news released that could be of use to insurgents such as the USAID office issue, the guarding of the UN building in Irbil, and reaction to a mortar attack.  Then there are other incidents that happen with the Zaytun unit that the Korean government minimizes or even tries to cover up.  However, in the grand scheme of things this is all minor stuff compared the OPSEC issues within the US military; especially at the Pentagon, where something has to be done about the constant leaks and released media reports that are threatening the lives of soldiers more than anyone in the milblogging community.

UPDATE: The Stars and Stripes has a follow up article on the milblog OPSEC issue which includes yours truly.  The article also has quotes from servicemembers in Korea on this issue including this one from a Public Affairs NCO in Seoul I found interesting:

“I think there does need to be some control on the blogs. It’s making our jobs harder because a lot of what is in the blogs feeds into negative press coverage, especially when a soldier is perceived as speaking for the Army. As any American, I chafe against any curtailment of freedom of speech, but as a soldier sometimes you sacrifice your freedoms for the greater good.”

I think this is an additional problem with the military, that some in the public affairs arena like this NCO, remain critical of milblogs even though the vast majority of milblogs are sending out a pro-military message much more effectively than the military public affairs offices are.  I cannot think of one big milblog that is negative against the military, while the big milblogs like Mudville, Milblogs, Blackfive, OP-FOR, etc. continue to provide accurate information about the military and push a pro-troops message to the general public. 

The Army justafiably has a concern about OPSEC that is addressed with the updated policy, but the solution that this public affairs NCO is suggesting will only surrender the information war that the military is already badly losing.

__________________________________________

I have received a number of e-mails today from people asking me how the new regulation on soldier blogs effects my blog after a lot of hysteria was created by this Wired magazine article claiming that the Pentagon is trying to shut down military bloggers due to concerns about operation security (OPSEC) reasons.  To figure out exactly what all the concern is about it is always best to look at the regulations themselves.  Here are some passages from the updated Chapter 2 of Army Regulation AR530-1, Operational Security that deals with military blogs:

Here is what the Army is defining sensitive information to be:

Okay I see no problems here with any of this.  Now this next passage is where I think a lot of the controversy is coming from:

This passage in the regulation doesn’t make sense when you think about it.  According to this passage every time you send out an e-mail much less update your blog you are supposed to get a OPSEC officer to review it?  Commanders and OPSEC officers do not have time to check Private Tentpeg’s every single e-mail and stopping Private Tentpeg from sending e-mails to mom and dad is quick way to get a Congressional Inquiry opened on you. 

Fortunately the Army is issuing a correction on this and clarifying what they meant by this regulation.  Here are the highlights from  the clarification:

• In no way will every blog post/update a Soldier makes on his or her blog need to be monitored or first approved by an immediate supervisor and Operations Security (OPSEC) officer. After receiving guidance and awareness training from the appointed OPSEC officer, that Soldier blogger is entrusted to practice OPSEC when posting in a public forum.

(…)

• Soldiers do not have to seek permission from a supervisor to send personal E-mails. Personal E-mails are considered private communication. However, AR 530-1 does mention if someone later posts an E-mail in a public forum containing information sensitive to OPSEC considerations, an issue may then arise.

I have had plenty of OPSEC training before and have always used to the rule of thumb to blog only about open source material from sites like Stars and Stripes, Chosun Ilbo, 2ID webpage, etc.  I could make this blog a whole lot more interesting if I blogged about FOUO or classified information, but there is no reason for anyone reading this blog to know about these things from me first.  If the Army wants to let the public know about these things then they will issue a press release to the media.  It is not my responsibility to determine what information needs to be released to the public and if all military bloggers remember that, there shouldn’t be any OPSEC problems.  Now back to blogging as usual.

You can read more about this issue at these sites:
Stars and Stripes
Blackfive
Milblogs
Michelle Malkin
OP-FOR

This weekend I downloaded and played with some different plug ins for WordPress.  Unfortunately one of them knocked out my comments for while.  I had to deactivate the Gregarious Digg plugin because it doesn’t work with the K2 theme comment system.  I thought it was a pretty good plugin until I discovered it crashed my commenting system. 

I also activated a plugin called Kramer which enrolled my site into the Technorati system and more accurately logs trackbacks to the site.  That plugin has been working well.  I also have the Popularity Contest Plugin installed.  I had to do a lot of code tweaking but it is working fine now.  That plugin uses a formula that includes page views, comments, trackbacks, etc. to determine the most popular page on the site.

Finally I tried to install the Bad Behavior plugin to cut back on the spam messages hitting my webpage, but for whatever reason the Bad Behavior plugin would crash my whole webpage, so I had to delete it to get my page working again.  It is unfortunate because my site gets hit with an unbelievable 300-400 spam messages daily. 

Everything should be working fine now and let me know if there are any issues or advice on other plugins that are worth trying out.

I know I have finally made it in the K-blogosphere because I have received an official Big Hominid sidebar image.  Much thanks to Kevin for the shout out.