Imagine your life ruined by an organized mob that convicts with scant, unreliable evidence. Fueled only by hearsay and rumors, an [a href="vny!://www.iht.com/articles/2006/08/14/news/korea.php"]invisible horde of your fellow citizens begins bombarding[/a] your snailbox, email, phone, work, school and family with threats, insults and general harassment. You are forced to drop out of school and quit your job as a result of constant attacks. You are shunned and ridiculed in public as anywhere you go, you are instantly recognized. Although it may seem to be just a second-rate Hollywood nightmare scenario reminiscent of "The Net," this sort of "organized mob" justice is being dealt out freely in South Korea where net usage is booming. So freely, in fact, that almost 1 in 10 of 13-65 year-olds has felt its sting. Could this trend hit the U.S.? Will policing net behavior eventually become necessary?
[hr style="width: 100%; height: 2px;"]
[table style="width: 525px; height: 121px;" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"][tbody][tr][td width="421"][h1] In South Korea, online rumors can hit hard [/h1] [/td] [/tr] [tr] [td align="left" valign="top" width="421"] [span class="text"][a href="vny!://www.iht.com/cgi-bin/search.cgi?query=By%20Choe%20Sang-Hun&sort=swishrank"]By Choe Sang-Hun[/a]
International Herald Tribune[/span]
[img]vny!://www.iht.com/images/article/spacer.gif" alt="" border="0" height="5" width="5"]
[!--[span class="text2"]WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 16, 2006[/span]
--] [span class="text2"]Published: August 14, 2006[/span][/td][/tr][/tbody][/table]
[a href="vny!://www.iht.com/cgi-bin/search.cgi?query=SEOUL&sort=swishrank"]SEOUL[/a] Kim Myong Jae's estranged girlfriend was found dead in her room in Seoul on April 22 last year, six days after she poisoned herself.[div style="visibility: hidden;"] [/div] Two weeks later, Kim, a 30-year-old accountant, found that he had been transformed into the No. 1 hate figure of South Korea's Internet community, a victim of a growing problem in a country that boasts the world's highest rate of broadband use.[div style="visibility: hidden;"] [/div] First, death threats and vicious text messages flooded his cellphone. Meanwhile, spreading fast through blogs and Web portals were rumors that Kim had jilted his girlfriend after forcing her to abort his baby, that he had assaulted her and her mother, and that his abuse had finally driven her to suicide.[div style="visibility: hidden;"] [/div] "By the time I found out the source of this outrage, it was too late. My name, address, photographs, telephone numbers were all over the Internet," Kim said. "Tens of thousands of people were busy sharing my identity and discussing how to punish me. My name was the most-searched phrase at portals." News reports and portals confirmed that his name was at the top of such lists.[div style="visibility: hidden;"] [/div] The allegations against Kim were first posted on his former girlfriend's home page after her death and quickly spread in various versions. Kim vehemently denies the allegations, and the police later said they could not substantiate them.[div style="visibility: hidden;"] [/div] But Web users took the matter into their own hands. They bombarded Kim's employer, the food and beverage company Doosan, with so many calls demanding that it fire Kim or face a boycott that Kim quit. Anonymous hate mail swamped the Web site of Kookmin University, where Kim attended evening classes, forcing him to drop out.[div style="visibility: hidden;"] [/div] "I couldn't believe what was happening to me was real," he said. "My family had to move to a new house. I was afraid to dine out or use public transportation. I had to live like a fugitive."[div style="visibility: hidden;"] [/div] In South Korea, which has one of the world's most developed Internet communities, the problem known as "cyberviolence" has reached frightening proportions, officials say.[div style="visibility: hidden;"] [/div] Complaints filed with the government's Korea Internet Safety Commission more than doubled to 42,643 last year from 18,031 in 2003. Women have reported sexual harassment. A 16-year- old schoolgirl accused of informing on an abusive teacher ran away after her photos and insults were splashed on her school Web site. A singer struggled with rumors that she was a man. Twist Kim, a singer and comedian, had a nervous breakdown after pornographic Web sites proliferated under his name, as if he had created them, causing television stations to spurn him.[div style="visibility: hidden;"] [/div] In most countries, Internet users oppose government attempts to censor the Internet. In South Korea, however, in both government-funded and private surveys, a majority of people support official intervention to check unbridled freedom of speech on the Internet.[div style="visibility: hidden;"] [/div] A poll taken in November showed that nearly one of 10 South Koreans from 13 to 65 said they had experienced cyberviolence.[div style="visibility: hidden;"] [/div] The problem in South Korea may presage what will happen in other countries, according to the authorities, who have begun cracking down on the problem.[div style="visibility: hidden;"] [/div] "In the past few years, the Internet has grown in South Korea explosively," said Kim Sung Ho, secretary general at Kinternet, a lobby of domestic portals. "The Internet community has developed faster and stronger in South Korea than elsewhere. So we are struggling with its side effects earlier than other nations."[div style="visibility: hidden;"] [/div] Since last year, dozens of people have been indicted on charges of criminal contempt or slander for writing or spreading malicious online insults about victims like Kim Myong Jae. They face fines of as much as 2 million won, or $2,067.[div style="visibility: hidden;"] [/div] This month, the National Assembly will debate a bill that would require the nation's 30 major Internet portals and newspaper Web sites to confirm the identities of visitors before allowing them to use bulletin boards, the main channel of cyberviolence.[div style="visibility: hidden;"] [/div] "The idea is to make people feel more responsible for what they are posting on the Net," said Oh Sang Kyoon, a director at the Ministry of Information and Communications. "Victims cannot live a normal life. They quit jobs and run away from society. They even flee the country. It's like lynching victims in a 'people's court on the Web.'"[div style="visibility: hidden;"] [/div] Some critics question whether such a law would solve the problem. Cyberviolence, they say, has been increasing even though most of the country's major Web sites are already applying the policy.[div style="visibility: hidden;"] [/div] "This is violating privacy in the name of protecting it," said Oh Byoung Il, director general at jinbo.net, a civic group. "It discourages anonymous whistle- blowers. It impedes the free flow of communication, the soul of the Internet."[div style="visibility: hidden;"] [/div] Official interference will also discriminate in favor of foreign portals like Google, said Kim of Kinternet. For instance, when users search for "sex" in a South Korean portal, they must first prove they are adults by supplying personal data - a requirement that does not apply to the Korean-language Google, which operates with an overseas server.[div style="visibility: hidden;"] [/div] But Kim Myong Jae condemned the portals as willing accomplices in online mob attacks. While painfully slow to respond to victims' complaints, Kim said, the portals - the largest of which, naver.com, attracts 15 million users a day - highlight real-time lists of the most- clicked-on news, thus helping spread sensational, and often libelous, items.[div style="visibility: hidden;"] [/div] Kim said he had filed suit against the nation's top four portals: Naver, Daum, Yahoo! Korea and Nate.[div style="visibility: hidden;"] [/div] And portals say they are now screening their contents more vigorously. "Rather than being an arena for sound debate, the Web bulletin boards have to some extent become a place for verbal defecation," said Choi Soo Yeon, a naver.com spokeswoman. "We have 300 monitors who work round the clock to delete abusive and defamatory language." But ultimately, the portals say, the users who post on the Web should be responsible for content.[div style="visibility: hidden;"] [/div] South Korea saw an explosion of Internet users as the country emerged from decades of military rule, and citizens jumped on the new technology as a way of expressing long-suppressed views. About 33 million South Koreans - out of a population of 48 million - use the Internet, most of them with broadband connections. And many of them are not shy about their feelings.[div style="visibility: hidden;"] [/div] News articles on portals or newspaper Web sites often are accompanied by feedback sections, where readers comments. Some news articles attract thousands of entries, ranging from thoughtful comments to raving obscenities. When suspicions first emerged last year that the cloning expert Hwang Woo Suk had faked his groundbreaking work, few dared to speak in public against the man lionized as a hero. Scientists, who unveiled evidence of fabrication through anonymous postings, brought about Hwang's downfall.[div style="visibility: hidden;"] [/div] One of the most famous victims of online mob rule was the so-called "dog- poop girl." A cellphone photograph of a girl who failed to clean up after her dog in a subway car was posted on the Internet. For weeks, people pursued her relentlessly; the girl reportedly dropped out of school as a result.[div style="visibility: hidden;"] [/div] To Kim Myong Jae, it was familiar. "Two months after I became the target, I visited a plaza near my old company. I dressed differently. Still a person reported my appearance on the Web, how I looked and how that person felt sick to see me," Kim said. "It's a handicap I may have to carry for a long time.
