Here are more details about the online opinion scandal which is the current focus of South Korean politics:
This photo, taken April 16, 2018, shows Rep. Kim Kyoung-soo of the ruling Democratic Party speaking during a press conference at the National Assembly in Seoul.
A sprawling online opinion rigging scandal in South Korea is stirring up a heated debate over the morality of polemic writers, the credibility of cyberspace discourse and whether to restrain the online freedom of expression to curb politicking.
Over the past several days, the scandal involving an influential blogger, who goes by the alias Druking, has roiled politics with the ruling Democratic Party (DP) quickly severing ties with the former party member, and the rival parties suspecting its possible link to his alleged misdeeds.
On Tuesday, the prosecution indicted Druking, surnamed Kim, and two others for allegedly using a computer program in January to jack up the number of “likes” or “feel the same way” clicks for two comments critical of the liberal government on a news article carried by the online portal Naver.
The article was about the government’s decision to have the two Koreas form a joint women’s hockey team for the PyeongChang Winter Olympics in February. The trio are suspected of using 614 different IDs to increase the number of the clicks.
They reportedly told police that they wanted to make it look like conservatives manipulated the comments, as they tried to test the program, known to be often misused to rig rankings for most searched commercial products.
The case attracted keen political attention, following the revelations that DP Rep. Kim Kyoung-soo, one of the most trusted confidants of President Moon Jae-in, has known and communicated with the key suspect through meetings or social media since 2016.
Although the lawmaker denies any involvement, the revelations have triggered speculation that Druking, with a large following in cyberspace, could have rigged online opinions even in the lead-up to the 2017 May presidential election.
The suspicion was reinforced as Kim Kyoung-soo admitted that he came to know Druking since mid-2016, visited the blogger’s publishing firm upon request in the autumn that year and met him again before Moon’s presidential primary last year. [Yonhap]
You can read much more at the link, but the fact that a political party was leaving fake comments to manipulate public opinion is nothing new.
What is making this issue so newsworthy is that the Moon administration attacked the former conservative government for doing the same thing. The difference though is that the National Intelligence Service (NIS) chief was organizing people to leave fake comments while for this scandal a political operative for a campaign was organizing fake comments. This dynamic may have legal differences, but in the court of public opinion it is pretty clear that the Moon administration no longer has any creditability when it comes to complaining about online discourse.
