[bestbits] Seoul Conference on Cyberspace 2013

[Byoung-il Oh]

Hi,

As you may know, Seoul Conference on Cyberspace 2013 will be held in Seoul
on Oct. 17-18.
http://www.seoulcyber2013.kr/en/main/main.do

Last May, I had met the chief officer of Preparatory Secretariat of the
conference to inquire to him the progress of the conference. At that time,
the detailed agenda and panelists had not been fixed yet. In the meeting, I
inquired what would the output of the conference and how civil society
could participate in the process. The answer was that they expected to
produce chair's summary plus as the output, but needed more discussion on
what could be the 'plus'.
As a preparatory process, they told several pre-workshop would be held.
http://www.seoulcyber2013.kr/en/event/workshop.html

However, they didn't give definite answer to the question of how the result
of pre-workshop would be linked to the output of the conference, how civil
society could participate in the process and give opinions to draft the
output.

After the meeting, I felt that this conference would not be for making
concrete policy through substantial discussions of multi-stakeholders, but
just cosmetic diplomatic events. Actually, the Preparatory Secretariat is
operated under the Ministry of Foreign Affiars, not Telecommunication
authority.

In the meeting, the chief officer told that he himself thought much of the
value of open and multi-stakeholder process, but they had to consider the
position of the countries (China, Russia etc) which don't like
multistakeholderism.

After that, we, the coaliton of civil society in Korea, invited a staff of
Preparatory Secretariat as a panel in our public forum last June, but we
couldn't hear nothing new from him.

Recently, I checked its homepage and found with surprise that anyone from
civil society could not invited as a panel.
http://www.seoulcyber2013.kr/en/program/speakers_1.html
Moreover, I found that they even restricted the participation of the
public. It was a closed conference! When I tried to register in the
conference, I had to request PIN first in the
http://register.seoulcyber2013.kr/, but I couldn't receive a PIN. So I
called to the secretariat and ask why. They said that PIN would be given to
the invited person. In the case of who were not invited, preparatory
secretariat will examine the person who requested to particiapte and dicide
whether to allow participation or not. I have no idea this was the
conventional practice in the former cyberspace conference.

And, I wonder how do you think about cyberspace conference, the importance
of the conference in the context of global internet governance.

Best Regards,
Oh Byoungil

-- 
<http://www.jinbo.net/support/>
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