A Korean blogger whose consistently accurate predictions about the global economy won him a worldwide audience of more than 100,000 was arrested by Korean federal authorities last month and charged with two counts of disseminating false information.

In Korea, as in Latvia, publishing information the government deems false is a federal offense.

Park Dae-sung, writing under the pen name ‘Minerva’, blogged for months last year, predicting a number of financial community events many others would have considered unlikely, including the collapse of the Korean currency and the demise of U.S. commercial banking giant Lehman Brothers.

But, when Park predicted the crash of Korea’s stock market, federal officials stepped in to silence him.

The liberal Korean newspaper Hankyoreh Daily denounced the government action against Park as an attack on freedom of speech: “The prosecution hurriedly went ahead with its investigation and a court readily gave prosecutors a permit to conduct a witch-hunt.”

Since his arrest, legal experts have publicly debated whether the charges against Park are, in fact, legal under Korean law. As it stands, now, Park faces up to five years in prison if convicted.

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