Amended internet law takes effect, but four civic groups urge three key reforms

Four civic organizations, including the Roh Moo-hyun Foundation, urged the government Tuesday to address three outstanding challenges in the newly amended Act on Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilization and Information Protection, which took effect the same day and includes provisions to regulate hate speech.

The Roh Moo-hyun Foundation, the April 16 Foundation, the May 18 Memorial Foundation and the Jeju April 3 Peace Foundation issued a joint statement saying, "The enforcement of the amended Network Act must be a beginning, not an end."

The four groups said the revision marked "a meaningful step forward" in that it was the first time hate speech had been classified as "illegal information" under the Network Act, having previously existed in a legal blind spot. They also welcomed provisions imposing reporting and handling obligations on large-scale platforms and formalizing a regulatory pathway for victims.

However, they said "three core challenges remain unresolved," and called for relaxing and clarifying the requirements for classifying illegal information, ▷making the criteria for designating large-scale platforms more realistic, ▷and introducing systematic risk-management obligations for platforms while strengthening their proactive liability.

Critics have noted that the amended law applies only to content that "seriously incites hatred and markedly undermines human dignity," and that the vagueness of those terms could make enforcement difficult.

The groups said "the dual high-threshold requirements of 'seriously' and 'markedly' make it harder to prove rights violations and leave most hate content that causes real harm in practice outside the law's reach," adding that "a judgment framework based solely on individual posts cannot capture this pattern of harm. The dual threshold must be relaxed, and the cumulative and repetitive nature of content must be codified in assessments of harm to lower the barrier for victim relief."

The groups also raised concerns that small and mid-sized online communities could remain in a regulatory blind spot under the current criteria, and called for stricter standards.

The statement said the reporting and handling obligations under the amended law "apply only to 'large-scale information and communications service providers,' with the enforcement decree setting the threshold at a daily average of 1 million or more users over the preceding three months," and argued that "to effectively curb the spread of real harm, the threshold should be lowered to a daily average of 500,000 or more users."

The groups also said that relying on a single metric — user count — makes it difficult to reflect the actual distribution of hate content on a platform, and called for multilayered criteria, including the proportion of hate and illegal information being circulated.

The organizations also said platform operators should be assigned management responsibilities and obligations, and that platforms should be required to implement technical filtering measures against illegal and distorted information.

The statement said the law "imposes only after-the-fact reporting and handling obligations on large-scale platforms, leaving unaddressed the structural problem of platforms spreading hate and distorted information through algorithms while profiting from it," and noted that the amendment places liability solely on those who post content.

The groups went on to say that "major platform operators should be required to manage the systemic risks their systems create, as under the EU's Digital Services Act," adding that "platforms have an obligation to assess and mitigate the risk that their services amplify historical distortion and hate speech."

The groups also expressed hope that "the enforcement of this law will serve as an opportunity to continuously develop the framework for responding to illegal online information and disinformation," and urged "swift legislative and administrative improvements on the three core challenges."

The amended Network Act, informally known as the "July 7 law," centers on provisions allowing courts to impose punitive damages of up to five times the actual damages when a person deliberately distributes illegal, false or manipulated information online and causes harm to others.

In addition, if illegal, false or manipulated information confirmed by a court ruling or similar determination is repeatedly distributed, the Broadcasting and Media Communications Commission may impose a fine of up to 1 billion won ($653,000).

Meanwhile, the People Power Party announced plans to file a constitutional complaint and pursue a full revision of the bill, which passed under the leadership of the Democratic Party of Korea.

PPP floor leader Jeong Jeom-sik said at a floor strategy meeting Tuesday that "the Democratic Party infringed on corporate freedom with the yellow envelope law, and is now suppressing freedom of expression with the 'gag law,'" warning that it "will normalize witch-hunt-style violence and create a social atmosphere of fear and silence."

Jeong said the party would "file a constitutional complaint against the gag law and pursue the introduction of a fully revised bill, with the party's official endorsement, that removes the toxic provisions."