Happy New Year to all my readers of the ROK Drop! As part of starting out 2024 I figured I would pull my blog stats and take a look back at the most read postings from 2023. As can be seen below the Overall Top 25 most read postings last year on ROK Drop is pretty well spread out across the past two decades. However, the passing of convicted USFK murderer Kenneth Markle in 2023 was easily the most read story of the year.
Yeonmi Park, juicy girls, room salons, and criminal cases are also popular postings. Some of my older longer form blog posts about USFK camps and GI incidents are still doing very well on Google as well. What is interesting is that despite all the headlines North Korea makes, it is not something people are using Google to look up information for. In my top 25 only one posting made it that was North Korea related. Many years ago North Korea postings were very popular, which shows how numb this topic has become with many people. ICBM launches and nuclear threats used to be big news and now no one really cares because they happen so frequently. What this means is that North Korea is really going to have to up their provocation strategy if they want to capture the world’s attention in 2024.
Here is another reason why I do not move the ROK Drop over on to Facebook:
One of the largest Korea-based online communities disappeared from the internet around 1 p.m. last Wednesday. According to its founder Travis Hull and moderators, Facebook deleted the 28,000-member group “OinK ― Only in Korea” without warning or explanation.
“Absolutely no word from the folks at Facebook so far,” Hull told The Korea Times. “We have petitioned Facebook to review their decision via a link they provide in their help section, but so far we have received no comment from the company and I’m not holding my breath that we will.”
Blame started flying immediately after the group disappeared, with nobody fully sure what caused the sudden removal. Speculation ranged from too many posts flagged for racism or “anti-racist” moderators limiting free speech, to a discussion about an actual crime, in which a member accused another of a serious crime and threats of retaliation were made.
There was also speculation Facebook algorithms may have reacted to a new weekly feature allowing users to promote their own social media content, titled “Whore Yourself Wednesdays.”
This incident makes me wonder if there was some poor translation done by somebody within the South Korean governmental bureaucracy that makes these decisions because I don’t see how the blog North Korea Tech violates the country’s National Security Law?:
A British journalist who runs a website that documents North Korean technology issues said Tuesday that he’ll appeal a decision by South Korean authorities to block his site for allegedly violating the country’s National Security Law.
Martyn Williams, whose North Korea Tech website has been blocked for almost two weeks, said the site does not violate the security law, which bans praising, sympathizing or cooperating with North Korea. The website “doesn’t seek to glorify or support North Korea,” he said in an email.
Williams, who is based in San Francisco, has written about issues ranging from cellphone usage in North Korea and its satellite technology, to a little-known computer operating system developed by North Koreans. He said much of the content on his website is based on announcements made by the North and South Korean governments and reports in the media.
The South’s Korea Communications Standards Commission confirmed Tuesday that it decided on March 24 to block the site because it allegedly violated the security law. The censorship body blocks websites deemed illegal or harmful to society, such as pornography, gambling and North Korea’s official outlets. [Associated Press via reader tip]
Thank you everyone for your patience as I have been busy trying to resolve technical difficulties with the site this week. My webhost provider, Blogs-About who has been hosting the ROK Drop since 2007 I think has went out of business. I first began to use their service because they were recommended in the WordPress For Dummies book that I used to become knowledgeable on how to use the WordPress blogging software that powers the ROK Drop. In the past I have never had any issues with them providing needed technical support and the site has run fine for all these years. However, for this outage I tried to contact them with no success. For some reason they have not been responding to any of their contact emails or numbers and their support site shows the same error that the ROKdrop.com site is showing. I am left to conclude that they have gone out of business?
Whatever did happen has caused me to open up a new webhosting account with Bluehost.com which is the largest WordPress webhosting company. They have so far been great in helping me get the new ROKdrop.net site up running. Also since they are such a large webhosting company they should not just disappear overnight like Blogs-About has apparently done. However, they cannot transfer over my 10 years worth of data or my ROKdrop.com web address until it is released from the Blogs-About servers which I have had no success with contacting. Fortunately I do have an XML backup file of my archives that I download every month. I plan to eventually get the files uploaded on to ROKdrop.net if I continue to have no success with contacting my old webhosting company.
While I continue to work this issue I plan to continue regular blogging here at ROKdrop.net. You will see that the new site has the Buddypress social media feature that I have installed. By registering a username you can create your own social media like presence on the ROK Drop website and post in the Forums I have set up. I receive comments, emails, and Facebook messages with article links all the time that I do not always have time to get to. The Forums will allow people to post these links there so if I do not get around to publishing the article on the main page readers can still comment on the article in the Forums.
Thank you once again everyone for your patience and if anyone has any advice on how to deal with this frustrating situation feel free to leave a comment or send me an email.
book that I used to become knowledgeable on how to use the WordPress blogging software that powers the ROK Drop. In the past I have never had any issues with them providing needed technical support and the site has run fine for all these years. However, for this outage I tried to contact them with no success. For some reason they have not been responding to any of their contact emails or numbers and 