The Korea Communications Commission (KCC) holds its 20th plenary meeting to discuss relevant agenda items. The core of the controversy surrounding the July 7 "Gag Law" lies not in whether the government directly deletes content, but in the operating structure that leads to preemptive measures by platforms, support for fact-checking organizations, and the operation of transparency centers. [Photo=Yonhap News] 

The controversy surrounding the amended Information and Communications Network Act, which took effect on July 7—the so-called "Gag Law"—cannot be judged by the text of the law alone. Its actual operation is specified in enforcement decrees and official notifications. 

The enforcement decree outlines the duties of major platforms regarding reporting, action, and notification, as well as the functions of transparency centers, while the official notifications establish the structure for international procedural norms to be followed by fact-checking organizations.

Therefore, the core issue is not the abstract notion of "regulating fake news." 

What does a platform do first when a report is received? Who supports the external fact-checking organizations? Is the transparency center a surveillance hub or a mechanism for victim relief? How does content based on news reports connect with media arbitration procedures? These questions represent the essence of the system.

1. Preemptive Platform Actions: Will the Transparency Center Block or Manage?

According to the enforcement decree and notification materials, the first point of operation for the July 7 Gag Law is not the government, but major platforms. Large information and communications service providers are to receive reports of illegal information or fabricated falsehoods and review necessary actions based on their internal operational policies. Once action is taken, the reason for the decision and the procedures for filing an objection must be communicated to the reporter and the poster. 

Legal commentaries also describe the core of the amended Information and Communications Network Act as a structure that imposes obligations on large platforms to prevent the distribution of fabricated information, handle reports and take actions, publish transparency reports, and establish autonomous operational policies.

The first risk in this structure is "preemptive action." 

Even if the government does not press the delete button itself, if a structure exists where a platform restricts the distribution of content based on its own criteria after receiving a report—leaving the user to file an objection only later—the damage to freedom of expression has already occurred.

Online expression relies on timeliness and spread. Content related to elections, personnel hearings, policy debates, and political criticism cannot be easily restored to its original state even if it is reinstated a few days later. By then, the viewership, advertising revenue, public discourse impact, and the critical window for political speech will have already vanished.

While transparency reports are necessary, they are merely ex-post mechanisms. 

A report can show what the platform did and to what extent. However, it cannot prevent individual posts from being unfairly taken down in the first place. Filing an objection after a preemptive measure has been taken may end up being nothing more than administrative post-processing rather than a genuine remedy for rights.

Thus, the nature of the transparency center is critical. 

If the transparency center remains a surveillance hub that connects platforms with fact-checking organizations and manages reports, it could become a mechanism that systematically reinforces the platforms' preemptive actions. 

Conversely, if the center is designed as a safety net that limits unfair preemptive measures and handles victim relief, it could mitigate concerns about the infringement of freedom of expression.

The problem is that it remains unclear whether the transparency center in the current structure is sufficiently designed as a victim relief institution. 

There is a need for mechanisms that substantively guarantee the poster’s right to refute and object to platform actions, and that extend to restoring posts, unblocking accounts, recovering monetization, and recommending damages when unfair actions are identified.

2. Financial Independence of Fact-Checking Organizations

The second issue is the independence of fact-checking organizations. 

The legislative notice for the enforcement decree states that the international fact-checking norms to be followed must align with internationally accepted principles and include criteria for ensuring the neutrality, fairness, transparency, and accountability of fact-checking activities. The KCC was granted authority to separately notify specific international standards.

The administrative notice for the official notification contains even more direct language. The proposed "Notification on the Designation of Norms for International Fact-Checking Procedures" specifies the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN)’s Code of Principles as the standard for international fact-checking procedures.

However, this point requires careful distinction. 

The IFCN Code of Principles is not a substantive standard for judging whether information is false. It is closer to an operational standard that dictates the procedures and ethical criteria under which a fact-checking organization should operate. The core principles involve non-partisanship, fairness, transparency of sources, transparency of funding and organization, public methodology, and open corrections.

In other words, the IFCN Code is not a standard for determining "what is false," but a procedural standard for "who should do the fact-checking and how." 

The problem arises when these procedural standards are integrated into the platforms' enforcement circuits. 

If a fact-checking organization's report is used to justify a platform’s decision to take action, the organization’s independence and funding structure transform from a simple operational issue into one regarding the legitimacy of restricting expression.

The legislative notice for the enforcement decree states that fact-checking organizations must maintain editorial and operational independence from the government, political parties, large information and communications service providers, and other stakeholders.

Major platforms are revamping their reporting and processing procedures in line with the amended Information and Communications Network Act. The autonomous operational policies of large platforms and the scope of content actions have emerged as key points of contention regarding the July 7 "Gag Law." [Photo=Yonhap News] 

Simultaneously, the duties of the transparency center include the establishment and support of fact-checking databases, the training and activation of fact-checking organizations, personnel development, policy/financial/technical support, analysis of transparency reports, support for agreements between platforms and fact-checking organizations, research, education, and international cooperation.

This is precisely the core issue. 

While the legislation demands independence for fact-checking organizations, it assigns the transparency center the function of providing them with policy, financial, and technical support. Government support does not automatically mean a violation of independence. However, when the selection of supported entities, budget allocation, technical support, agreement facilitation, and report analysis are all bundled into one circuit, controversy over independence is inevitable.

The same applies when platform companies cover the costs. 

If a platform pays the money, an external fact-checking organization issues a verification report, and the platform uses that result as a basis for restricting posts, a conflict of interest arises. 

The problem deepens if costs are passed on to users or posters. It could create a structure where users effectively bear the costs of a fact-checking system that may restrict their own expressions.

Independence cannot be guaranteed simply by declaring that one must be "independent from the government and platforms." 

Who pays the money, who selects the recipients of support, who manages the agreements, and who uses the findings must all be disclosed. 

For the transparency center to be truly transparent, it must disclose its funding structure and relationships of interest before disclosing fact-checking results.

3. Double Regulation of the Press

The third issue is the double regulation of the press. 

Internet news outlets already have an intermediate path: the Press Arbitration Commission (PAC). A person claiming harm from a news report can request corrections, counter-arguments, follow-up reports, and damages against the news organization, and the news organization can contest these within the commission's procedures.

The core of the PAC model is not whether it has funding, but the rigor of its procedures. The Act on Press Arbitration and Remedies for Damage requires the commission to be composed of 40 to 90 members, including those with qualifications as judges, lawyers, individuals with over 10 years of experience in journalism, or experts with rich academic and practical experience in the media. 

Arbitration is conducted by an arbitration panel consisting of up to five members, and the presiding arbitrator must be someone qualified as a judge or lawyer.

The PAC is trusted not merely because it is linked to public funds, but because its composition, procedures, rights of defense, and the legal effect of its decisions are institutionalized to a quasi-judicial level. 

However, if a YouTube video based on the same report becomes subject to preemptive action based on internal platform criteria, the problem changes. 

A report that circulates normally on a newspaper's website or an internet news page could face exposure restrictions or deletion controversy due to platform evaluation on YouTube. While text articles have the procedural buffer of the PAC, video content may be subject to the platform’s preemptive action first.

Of course, some interpret the amended Information and Communications Network Act as limiting the scope of platform actions for news organizations, internet news service providers, and internet multimedia broadcasting service providers. 

The explanation is that for these entities, only actions such as marking content as harmful to youth, dismissing reports, or taking measures based on autonomous operational policies are possible. 

Yet, this is precisely where the contention lies. 

Do reports-based videos on YouTube channels run by news organizations clearly fall under that exception? How far can a platform's "action based on autonomous operational policy" go? 

When PAC procedures and internal platform reviews collide, which takes precedence? A clear answer to this question is needed. 

The same report could be in the realm of press arbitration when circulated as an article on a website, but move to the realm of internal platform review when circulated as a YouTube video. 

If a news report moves from the PAC path to the platform’s preemptive action path the moment it is uploaded to a platform, then freedom of the press varies depending on the medium format.

This issue is also linked to the financial independence of fact-checking organizations. 

If the findings of an external fact-checking organization supported by the transparency center are combined with platform actions, news reports could be placed into a separate regulatory circuit that bypasses existing legal procedures like the PAC. This is the issue of double regulation of the press caused by the July 7 Gag Law.

When viewing the operating structure of the July 7 Gag Law based on enforcement decrees and official notifications, it is not a system of direct government deletion, but an indirect management system that proceeds through platform preemptive action, external fact-checking, transparency center support/analysis, and ex-post objections/dispute mediation. 

The problem is that answers regarding how this circuit limits the platform's preemptive actions, how it recovers damages from unfair actions, and how it connects content based on news reports to PAC procedures are not sufficiently visible.

The essence of responding to fabricated false information is not stronger surveillance, but fairer procedures. 

The issue is not the intention to block fabricated information, but rather who makes the judgment, who pays the costs, and who restores the damage in that process. 

The moment the transparency center hardens into a management hub rather than a safety net, this law may function not as a platform accountability law, but as a law for the double regulation of the press.