A group of Korean scholars recently launched a campaign to support and vindicate a Korean-American who was indicted by the U.S. government on an espionage charge while he served as a North Korea expert for the U.S. State Department.

That Korean-American is Stephen Kim, a former State Department arms expert, and next on deck in the Obama administration's unprecedented persecution (err, prosecution) of so-called "leakers," who are usually whistleblowers.

Undeterred by its extravagantly ungraceful belly-flop in the case of former NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, the Justice Department is pursuing the Kim case with equally misguided over-zealousness. Kim, like Drake, is being charged under the heavy-handed Espionage Act, which is meant to go after spies, not public servants. His "crime" caused no harm to the United States and did not benefit a foreign nation (elements of the Espionage Act.)

Citizens of South Korea appear more transparency friendly than their government, and attuned to the free speech implications of silencing dissent. No surprise in light of South Korea government's indicting an activist just last week:

South Korean prosecutors indicted a social media and freedom of speech activist this week for reposting messages from the North Korean government's Twitter account.