As was expected, the country’s IT companies are feeling the impact of the government’s announcement that it will monitor cyberspace activities in real time.

On Sept. 18, the Supreme Prosecutor’s Office announced that it would establish a special team of five prosecutors and investigators within the Seoul Central District Prosecutor’s Office to monitor cyberspace in real time in order to act “preemptively” against the dissemination of false information. Redistributors of false information would be penalized to the same extent as the original disseminator, the Supreme Prosecutor’s Office said.

The measures ― hurriedly announced following the remark by President Park Geun-hye at a Cabinet meeting on Sept. 16 that insults against the president have gone too far and that remarks in cyberspace are causing social divisions ― smack of an attempt to muzzle public opinion.

Addressing public concerns that even SNS messages will be scrutinized, the prosecutor sought to clarify on Sept. 25 that private communications through SNS such as KakaoTalk and Line would not be monitored. Speaking to reporters, a prosecutor from the Seoul Central District Prosecutor’s Office said that actions will be taken in response to dissemination of false information in cyberspace such as portal sites, implying that community sites, bulletin boards and blogs that are part of Internet portals will be subjected to real-time scrutiny.

Yet, the assurance that SNS will not be monitored has failed to allay the fears of netizens who are reported to be migrating to overseas SNS to avoid possible government snooping. Ironically, Telegram, a messenger service application said to have been developed by a Russian to avoid censorship there, is seeing a steep rise in the number of downloads from Korea. Other SNS apps with servers located overseas are also seeing a sudden increase in Korean subscribers.

The exodus of netizens seeking cyber-refuge in foreign SNS has been prompted not only by practical concerns about privacy. The exodus is a form of protest against the measures, which are seen to be a restriction of freedom of expression. In the face of threats of government censorship, the public is engaging in self-censorship or seeking other venues in which to express themselves.

It is regrettable and worrisome that the IT sector is bearing the brunt of the government’s folly. Yet, the current mass migration should not come as a surprise to the government, which should have foreseen such an eventuality when it announced the de facto cybercensorship plan.

Continued defection of Korean SNS users to foreign SNS threatens the very survival of Korean IT companies. The threat of cyberspace censorship will most likely hurt the global expansion of Korean SNS as well. At a more fundamental level, the threat of censorship will dampen not only the growth of Korea’s IT sector but also stifle the growth of the creative economy espoused by the current administration.

Already, Telegram, which currently does not support the Korean language, is working on providing a Korean service. The government should stop its folly before the damage to Korea’s IT sector becomes irreversible.