Korea Ranks 5th in Google Censorship Requests

Google on Wednesday released data on censorship requests made by 40 governments around the world from July to December last year. Korea asked the Internet search firm to remove 64 items from its services during the six month period, ranking 5th in the number of requests.  

Brazil topped the list with 291 removal requests, followed by Germany (188), India (142) and the U.S. (123).

Of the 64 requests by Korea, online advertisements accounted for the largest share with 38 cases, followed by web search results (18). The Korean government also requested four map items, one news article and one blog be deleted.

Japan and Taiwan ranked low with less than 10 requests each. China was excluded from the statistics because it regards "censorship demands as state secrets, so we cannot disclose that information at this time," Google said. If China had been included, it would have ranked first, the Internet firm added.

Of the Korean government's requests, Google considered 89.1 percent justifiable and deleted the materials partially or completely. Most of the censorship requests by the various world governments were found to be justifiable, the firm said.

Requests for information on private users were made more frequently. Brazil made the most such requests with 3,663 cases, followed by the U.S. (3,580), the U.K. (1,166), India (1,061), France (846), Italy (550), and Germany (458). Korea stood at 16th place with 44 cases.

Brazil and India mostly asked for personal information on users of Google’s popular social networking service Orkut, due to slanderous or personal attacks between users. The U.S. sought the deletion of content from YouTube, while Germany requested the removal of Nazi-related materials.

It is the first that a major Internet firm has released censorship statistics by country on its website. Google said it will update the information every six months and refine it.