Left: Guerrillas of the Samsung Empire, Pressian Books, 2008 Right: Bad Samaritans, Ha-Joon Chang, 2007 In 2008, the National Ministry of Defence was found to have produced a list of 23 “Anti-governmental” books and officially banned them from  the military. An investigation found that under this regulation, all Korean soldiers are banned from reading and/or possessing them, and are subject to having their belongings searched when returning from a holiday (Pressian) (Reminder: All Korean men above the age of 18 must serve in the military for 2 years). The Seoul Central District Court ruled against the first lawsuit filed by 11 publishers and 11 authors in 2012, and they lost their appeal at the Seoul High Court the following year (News1). In both cases, the publishers and authors claimed 200 million KRW (200,000 USD) in damages caused by this censorship. The Seoul High Court’s reasoning is that this action could not be classified as an act of censorship nor as a violation of the freedom of press, since (a) the books were not banned …