My impression of South Korea (as someone living in Japan and sometimes talking to people who have moved back and forth) is that it's closer to Singapore on the

My impression of South Korea (as someone living in Japan and sometimes talking to people who have moved back and forth) is that it's closer to Singapore on the free/authoritarian scale. E.g. for many years they had a law where to sign up for any large chat forum (like a Korean Hacker News) you'd have to enter your government ID numbers so they could effectively ban you for harassment/slander etc.