[New-imc] KOREA IMC new-imc DEADLINE 6 APRIL 2009 GMT 7:00

[nick]

proposed_imc_name:Korea Indymedia
proposed_imc_url: http://korea.indymedia.org
current_url: proposed_imc_name:Korea Indymedia
proposed_imc_url: http://korea.indymedia.org
current_url: http://indymedia.cast.or.kr
country:South Korea
contact_name: Miwon, contact_email: piacereina at gmail.com
tech_name:Bum
tech_email: bumbarian at gmail.com, tech.imckorea at gmail.com
new imc liason: Nick, Houston, nickcooper at indymedia.org

the rest of the new-imc form:
http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/new-imc/2009-February/0205-jh.html

 1 ) I M C   M E M B E R S H I P   C R I T E R I A
2 )   D i v e r s i t y   S t a t e m e n t s
3 )   M i s s i o n   S t a t e m e n t
4 )   E d i t o r i a l   Guidelines

1) IMC Membership Criteria

/Our collective discussion the IMC membership criteria at a general
meeting on Tuesday, March 24, 2009. This is our response to the
criteria./

IMC MEMBERSHIP CRITERIA: Responses from Korea Indymedia Each IMC and
Global Working Group is expected to:

a. Agree in spirit to the NIMC Mission Statement and Principles of Unity,

/We have reviewed the NIMC mission statement and principles of unity.
Our core members have fully agreed to both of these documents from the
beginning. However, there are some who have came to biweekly general
meetings only once and probably haven’t had the opportunity to review
these documents. Among our committed members and affiliates, we agree
to these documents. /

b. Have a committed membership substantial enough to sustain a functional IMC,

/We have a committed tech team, editorial working group and outreach
working group. Two of our committed members will leave Korea for
studying and working abroad. The rest of our committed members will
stay in Korea. /

c. Have open and public meetings (no one group can have exclusionary
"ownership" of an IMC),

/Our meetings are open and public. We have made efforts to spread the
word about these meetings, as well as post information (meeting notes)
on our blog at http://blog.jinbo.net/imc/

d. Work toward developing a local Mission Statement or Statement of
Purpose. Network Mission Statement may be adopted or used on an
interim basis,

/Our local mission statement is complete, but will always be open for
revision following consensus decisions./

e. Establish and publish an editorial policy which is developed and
functions through democratic process, and with full transparency,

/Our editorial policy, like our mission statement, is complete but
will always be open for revision following decisions made by consensus
process./

f. Agree to the use of Open Publishing as described in the NIMC
Editorial Policy [editorial collective comments: "We did agree that
the term "Open Publishing" was one that is still being defined by the
Global Network Collective, and we would wait and see what the results
were before rewriting this criteria],

/We agree to the use of open publishing and are putting it into
practice on our website where anyone can post content with anonymity
on the newswire./

g. Adopt a decision-making policy that is in alignment with consensus
principles which include open, transparent and egalitarian processes,

/We are using the model for consensus decision-making as provided by
www.consensus.org <http://www.consensus.org/>/ /Over time, our process
has been continually developing in order to become more efficient,
inclusive and participatory./

h. Have a spokesperson(s) willing and capable of participating in the
global decision-making process and meetings as a rotating
liaison/representative, with a clear understanding of the
responsibilities that come with this role,

/We have liaisons on the global process, tech, communication and new
imc lists. Our liaisons have full comprehension of the
responsibilities that come with this role./

i. Participate in the key IMC Network Communication Methods that
pertain to the health and vitality of the Network and that contribute
to the work of the IMC. Assure that at least one person from your
local IMC participates at any given time on the IMC-Communications
list,

/Jeff (Eemoogee) is our liaison on the communications list and has
been fulfilling the responsibility of relaying messages back and forth
between the global network and our collective./

j. (NOT FINALIZED): Have no official affiliation with any political
party, state or candidate for office (comments: but individual
producers have freedom to do whatever they like and local IMCs can
"feature" stories about various political parties and initiatives),

/We do not currently have and will never have any kind of official
affiliation with political parties and especially not nation-states,
political candidates or government officials./

 k. IMCs shall in no way engage in commercial for-profit enterprises.
[We could add: The IMCN is committed to the decommercialization of
information and will disassociate from any local IMC that decides to
become a for profit media corporation.]

/We are committed to non-commercial activities and form of
organization. There is no way we will ever consider engaging in
commercial for-profit enterprises./

l. Display a "local version" of the IMC "i" logo on your website and literature.

/We will always have an “i” logo that identifies us with the global
IMC network. However, our current logo isn’t very aesthetically
appealing, so we are hoping to make a better one soon./

m. Include the IMC Network current "Cities List" on your site,
preferably on the front page. /The cities list is and always will be
on the front page of our website. It’s currently on the typical left
side of the site, but it’s possible we could put it on the bottom
(like Belgium IMC) or something./

2 )   D i v e r s i t y   S t a t e m e n t s Our collective consists
of people representing over six nationalities: Korean, Nepali, USA,
Bangladesh, Japanese, Austrian, and who speak even more languages.
About over half of the core members are Korean. Full-time activists,
filmmakers, artists, computer programmers/designers, students,
teachers, white and blue collar workers. Gender-wise, there are an
equal level of male and female members. Most people are in their
twenties and thirties. Acknowledging our present group dynamic and
with the goal of being open and accessible to all types of people, we
are conscious and considerate of potential members who might have
difficulty in mingling with the people who were previously involved.
One step that we must take is to ensure that language does not become
an impediment for participation. Raise awareness of privilege or
marginalization based on nationality, gender, race, personality, or
abilities. Discuss these and work towards creating a process for
evaluating and confronting any inequalities that exist. We have
conducted Language exchange workshops in the past. We will work to
continue to do so, as well as holding tech and art workshops. We will
also share resources, including computer and video equipment.

3 )   M i s s i o n   S t a t e m e n t Korea Independent Media Center
(IMC) Mission Statement Feb 23, 2009 Background Information South
Korea has a vibrant internet community, that includes many independent
media sites. Some of these media sites incorporate the participation
of users, often labeled "citizen journalism." As relatively healthy as
the alternative media scene is in Korea, it is mainly insular,
accessible only by Korean speakers. Likewise, we are unaware of any
news site that allows "open publishing" by non- members, which is a
key component of IMC. In 2005, there was an initiative to create an
IMC-Korea which did not come to fruition, the reasons cited being the
lack of a critical mass of participants and sufficient outreach with
other existing organizations. The present initiative to create
IMC-Korea includes two members who were involved in the first attempt,
and has been careful to address the problems that occurred before.
Some of the ways we have done this was to gather a larger core of
members before we began the planning process, organizing and preparing
more thoroughly before the application process, and communicating
widely through various mediums in English and Korean about IMC in
general and the function of an IMC- Korea specifically. There have
been years of discussion and organizing since the first attempt among
media activists and others dedicated to building an IMC-Korea. It was
finally decided that there were enough people, resources, and interest
among South Korean activists and organizations to confidently proceed
with the creation of IMC-Korea. What are we doing now? IMC Korea
currently has three different working groups: 1) Tech working group
for website development; 2) Outreach working group for contacting and
working with other groups as well as inviting other groups and
individuals to use IMC and get involved; 3) Editorial working group
for developing the editorial policy and editing the website content.
If the needs arise, we are also open to starting new working groups
for new projects and efforts. Proposals for new working groups can be
made on the e-mail list, blog or at the general meetings. This mission
statement was written after two months of preparation and activity in
early 2009. If you are interested to read about the current activities
of Korea Indymedia, please check our blog or e- mail list archives.
Website Development The Korea IMC tech working group decided to use
Drupal for website development. Currently, the website allows anyone
to post content in the open newswire with anonymity. Those we desire
to post a feature story need to log in as a member to post content in
the feature column. In the future, we plan to restrict log in
membership to administrators and subject the feature column to the
consensus decision-making process of the editorial working group which
has the responsibility of communicating with the whole IMC group
through our e-mail list and biweekly meetings. Korea IMC also has a
test website for experimenting with modules, themes and other website
configurations. Before any new configurations are applied to the
website, we hope to have open discussions and use a consensus process
for making these decisions. Outreach The Korea IMC outreach working
group has been making special efforts to contact media activist
groups, art and music collectives, labor activist groups, feminist
groups, environmental action groups, student groups, international
solidarity groups and more. Our purpose for contacting these groups is
to invite them to produce content, use the website and get involved in
our project. When contacting these groups, we also describe our
project and indymedia in general as an autonomous, independent news
outlet that doesn't belong to one particular group or interest, but is
open for public participation from all groups and individuals. The
outreach working group is currently in the process of planning film
screenings as a method of outreach. Not all of our outreach efforts
have been made through the working group project. Many of our outreach
efforts have been carried out by individual IMC members who contact
groups and individuals, distribute fliers at demonstrations and pass
the word on to groups we are already involved with. Editing Our
editorial policy has been developed and may be updated or revised by
consensus decisions in the future. Our editorial working group has
public meetings and is responsible for making decisions to hide
newswire posts, post features and check with everyone through the
email list or biweekly general meetings before making these decisions.
Content So far, our content has mainly been produced by those involved
in our project and our comrades. We have given special attention to
the Yongsan catastrophe in which 6 people died when the Korean SWAT
team attacked a group of people resisting eviction and urban
redevelopment in Yongsan, Seoul. The prosecution of resistors, police
repression and demonstrations related to this disaster as well as the
Seoul Metropolitan Government's urban redevelopment program has been
covered in our reports. Other stories about the US military
occupation, NATO resistance and a corporate TV program have also been
produced and uploaded onto the newswire and feature column of the
website. We hope that IMC content production will become widespread
among a diverse variety of groups and individuals. Our objectives and
plans for the future Members of our current preparation group share a
variety of goals, desires and plans. Individual members emphasize some
goals and plans stronger than other goals and plans according to each
of our unique interests and conditions. Indymedia is valuable for
exchanging information and news about issues and events which are
often ignored by mainstream media. Since Indymedia is a global
network, exchanging news and information on a global level is a
valuable asset that is unique to Indymedia. Some of our core members
emphasize exchanging news, formation and networking on a global scale
as a goal of the current Korea IMC project. Indymedia is valuable for
open publishing and allowing anyone to post content with anonymity.
Anonymity and open, participatory media content production and
distribution is not provided by many news outlets. These elements are
special to Indymedia and essential for protecting the human right to
freedom of speech. Some of our core members emphasize providing a
participatory news outlet with anonymity and open publishing as a goal
of the current Korea IMC project. Both of these objectives are
especially important to the conditions of South Korean media since
there aren't any non-commercial, participatory news outlets that are
part of a global network. These goals are shared by everyone involved
in the current project, but emphasized on different levels by
different members. Another goal that we share is to providing coverage
of events and conditions that the mainstream media usually provides
inaccurate or insignificant coverage of.

  We have had a debate about whether we should name our collective
Korea Indymedia or Seoul Indymedia. After a long debate, we have
reached consensus for Korea Indymedia.   There are several reasons why
we chose Korea Indymedia:   1) we are worried that "seoul imc" would
create a feeling of exclusion for all those living outside of seoul
(meaning that people will feel that they can't use the website unless
they live in seoul and/or are reporting on issues in seoul); 2)
although people living in other regions have up until now not been
involved in our core meetings, there has been participation from
people outside of Seoul as far as publishing, and many of our core
members are involved innation-wide groups or have connections with
media activists in other regions. 3) we don't want to limit Indymedia
to seoul since there is already a problem of media being concentrated
in seoul. We are aware of the dangers of one group wielding power due
to region and possession of domain name and consider this to
beantithetical to the indymedia principles. Although we choose the
name Korea Indymedia, we would welcome and encourage other IMCs to be
formed all around Korea (Busan, Masan, Seoul, Ulsan, Gwangju, Jeju,
Daejeon, Daegu, PyungYang, everywhere) and make all effortsto use the
Korea Indymedia website collectively with all participants. If this
opportunity develops, it will be phenomenal. We plan to focus efforts
on outreach to other areas and groups in Korea.

 4 )   E d i t o r i a l Guidelines The Korea Independent Media Center
is an open-publishing platform for news, issues, actions and analysis
reporting on grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial social justice,
environmental and political issues. IMC Korea is maintained by a
network of media activists, social movement groups, and individuals.
IMC Korea is dedicated to the open publishing ethos. This page
explains how content on the site is generated and how you can
contribute.

Open Posting Guidelines Contents on the newswire and calendar are
generated by anyone who wants to contribute. IMC volunteers moderate
the site and collaborate in the production of features. Featured
articles are to be shown on the front 'Feature' section. If you check
"post it on the feature page", or email to imckorea at jinbo.net, your
article can be published on the feature section. IMC moderators can
add some pictures and links related to the post. The title, subtitles
and article format can be altered or added with the author's
permission.
***Now we are developing a voting process through which featured
articles will be selected. Both the authors and readers will be able
to participate in the voting process by ticking off at "Recommend this
article." Articles may be promoted for the following reasons:
(Moderators will promote any good posts. The guidelines below cover
common practice, but are neither mandatory or comprehensive.)
* original, first hand reports on actions and other events
* critical and original analysis
* translated and edited reports from another language, on condition
that the sources should be attached In general, the following types of
posts will not be promoted:
* copy-pasted content from other sources (blogs, etc.)
* poorly written or incomprehensible content Occasionally we choose to
hide posts that violate the open posting guidelines. Because of the
'real time' nature of the newswire, it is not possible to monitor its
contents 24 hours a day. (All articles, hidden and showing can be
inspected via the View all posts page. ) Articles and/or comments may
be hidden for the following reasons:
* Discrimination: posts using language, imagery, or other forms of
communication promoting racism, fascism, xenophobia, sexism,
homophobia, or any other form of discrimination.
* Inaccuracy: posts that are inaccurate or misleading.
* Advertising: posts with personal, group, or product advertisement.
*Disruptive: Contributions by individuals who habitually publish above
mentioned discouraged content. Posts where topical or regional
selections disrupt the utility of the sub pages (i.e. spamming
regional and topic selections).
* Reposts: Articles that are simply copy-pasted from corporate news sites
* Personal attack: Articles and/or comments that contain abusive
language against other activists or site users. On very rare
occasions, some content may be fully deleted. Past instances have
included content including pornography and personal details. Korea IMC
follows this editorial guideline which is designed for the smooth
functioning of the website and upholding the IMC Principles of Unity.