I’ll admit that things are much more liberal here below the 38th parallel, but it looks like South Korea may be taking a few cues from its northern neighbor when it comes to free speech. We wrote previously about the blogger who was arrested for speaking his mind on the financial crisis, but now it looks like Korean Internet regulations are forcing even the mighty Google to bend it’s “Don’t be Evil” motto.

It looks good on the surface, but the government’s “Friendly Digital Korea” initiative which helps foreign residents gain access to Korean members-only websites is really just lipstick on a pig. The only reason a change is necessary is that users of major websites in Korea are required to register using their full names and verified government identification numbers. Just think if you wanted to sign up for an email account and were prompted for your actual Social Security Number—no way!

I can sleep easier now knowing I can use my foreign registration to sign up for Naver and have the cops show up at my door when I search for things like “Bodo League massacre” and “how to defect to North Korea”.

Unfortunately, it looks as if the regulators are even getting at Google and YouTube, with Google Korea announcing that South Korea “is the first country worldwide for which Google will be collecting real-name information that can be used to identify individuals.” They don’t even do this in China, so that’s saying something.

I guess the only upside is that maybe we can track down and stop the next star wars kid before he makes a fool of himself with over 12 million views and counting.