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.
I think we know where the Cho daughters got their bad temper from:
The family of Hanjin Chairman Cho Yang-jo. At left is Cho Hyun-ah, President of the KAL Hotel Network, Cho Hyun-min, senior managing director at Korean Air, Lee Myung-hee, chairperson of the Ilwoo Foundation, Cho Yang-jo, and Cho Won-tae, president of Korean Air. All have been criticized for various incidents regarding abusive behavior toward staff and private citizens. [Hankyoreh]Police said Monday they began a preliminary investigation into the wife of the Korean Air Line Co. chief over alleged physical and verbal violence.
Lee Myung-hee, wife of Chairman Cho Yang-ho and director of the Ilwoo Foundation, is suspected of hitting workers who were part of a construction crew hired to remodel her Seoul residence in 2013.
She allegedly told them to kneel down and slapped them in the face and kicked them in the shins.
She is also suspected of verbally insulting an employee at a Incheon-based hotel affiliated with Hanjin Group, which includes Korean Air, and later having the worker quit for not recognizing her. [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but someone in Korea needs to make a reality television show following this family around.
Riot police break up a sit-in by anti-THAAD protesters in Seongju, some 215 km southeast of Seoul, on April 23, 2018. (Yonhap)
Construction vehicles made it into the base of the United States THAAD anti-missile system in southeastern South Korea on Monday after riot police removed protesters blocking the road to oppose THAAD’s deployment.
Twenty-two vehicles carrying construction materials, equipment and workers entered the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense base in Seongju, North Gyeongsang Province, from around 11:20 a.m. as part of a project to build facilities for troops manning the unit.
Their entrance came about three hours after riot police began removing about 200 residents and activists occupying the Jinbat bridge in a sit-in aimed at preventing the vehicles’ passage. About 3,000 riot police were mobilized to break up the protest.
Scuffles and shoving matches broke out as police moved in. Protesters resisted by inserting their arms into plastic pipes in an attempt to tie themselves together to make it difficult for police to carry them away. They also chanted slogans, such as “Out with violent police.”
About 10 people were injured during the clash, with five or six of them taken to a hospital. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but it appears from the article that it was pretty easy for the police to open the road. I wonder if the anti-US leftist groups did not send their manpower down to Seongju to put up a fight with the police because of this week’s Kim-Moon summit?
Protesters resist police by putting their arms into plastic pipes in an attempt to tie themselves together during a sit-in in Seongju, some 300 km southeast of Seoul, on April 23, 2018. (Yonhap)
The Cho sisters have both been officially fired by their father from Korean Air:
Emily Cho
Add Hanjin Group’s Korean Air Lines Co. to the country’s family-run conglomerates that are seeing the founding clan’s representation diluted.
This time, Hanjin Chairman Cho Yang-ho pushed out his youngest daughter after allegations she threw water in the face of an advertising agency worker during a business meeting. For good measure, he also fired his eldest daughter who four years ago spent five months in jail after the so-called nut rage incident. The executive had forced a plane to return to the gate at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York because of the way she’d been served her macadamia nuts.
Cho Yang-ho, also chairman of Korean Air, said in an email Sunday he will promote professional business managers to replace the airline’s Senior Vice President Emily Cho, his youngest daughter, and Heather Cho, president of the Kal Hotel Network. The chairman announced the changes days after South Korean police had searched Korean Air headquarters following reports of the “water rage” incident. [Bloomberg]
You can read more at the link, but I wonder how long this will last before they are brought back in some capacity into the family business?
Ri Myong-su (in the red circle), chief of the General Staff of the Korean People’s Army, is seen dozing off at a plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the North Korea’s ruling Worker’s Party on April 20, 2018, in this image captured from North Korea’s Korean Central Television on April 22. Jo Yon-jun (in the blue circle), head of the Workers’ Party of Korea Inspection Commission, glares at Ri. (Yonhap)
Here are how police in Daegu are hoping to help prevent crime by foreign workers in Daegu:
Seo-gu Bisan 7-dong voluntary crime prevention group members, Youn Seong-gu, left, Gul Na Deem, right, are passing by a tea room located in Bukbu Bus Terminal / Courtesy of Seo-gu Bisan 7-dong voluntary crime prevention group
Daegu Seobu Police have been cooperating with foreigners to jointly patrol areas where crimes by foreigners often occur.
On Wednesday, 16 members of Seo-gu Bisan 7-dong voluntary crime prevention group joined police patrols.
The area around Bukbu Bus Terminal where many foreigners hang out was their target area.
The crew included seven foreigners ― one Sri Lankan, one Chinese, three Pakistanis and two Bangladeshis.
“Bisan 7-dong around Bukbu Bus Terminal is one of the areas with a high density of foreigners. Crimes involving foreigners take place frequently,” inspector Kim Dong-sik said. [Korea Times]
It looks like people are slowly catching on to what I said when Kim Jong-un’s nuclear test suspension remarks were hailed as some kind of major breakthrough when it isn’t:
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, second from left at the podium, presides over a plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea in Pyongyang on Friday. Kim declared the North will stop all nuclear and missile tests and close down its underground nuclear test site at the meeting. [RODONG SINMUN]North Korea’s announcement Friday that it will stop all nuclear and missile tests was welcomed by the South and the United States, but some critics say the statement didn’t actually indicate any interest in denuclearization from the recalcitrant state.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was quoted in a lengthy report released by the North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency Saturday as saying that no such tests were necessary anymore, “given that the work for mounting nuclear warheads on ballistic rockets was finished as the whole processes of developing nuclear weapons were carried out in a scientific way and in regular sequence.”
Kim said North Korea, starting immediately, will never use nuclear weapons nor transfer nuclear weapons or nuclear technology under any circumstances unless the country faces a nuclear provocation or threat.
The North will also “facilitate close contact and active dialogue” with neighboring countries and international society in order to guarantee the peace and security of the Korean Peninsula and the world by creating an “international environment favorable for socialist economic construction,” Kim said. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read more at the link, but there has been nothing done so far by the Kim regime different from what they have done before. Everything they are doing is from their standard playbook and the Korean left and international media is largely playing along with it. I’ll start getting hopeful when international inspectors are allowed to go in and monitor their nuclear facilities and artillery and troops are withdrawn from the DMZ. Until concrete actions like this are taken this is just more of the same.
It must be a slow day for the Korean police to warrant raiding a blogger for rigging comments:
Police on Sunday raided a local publishing company run by an influential blogger as part of a probe into allegations that he ran a massive scheme to manipulate online comments in news articles about President Moon Jae-in.
Police sent investigators to search the premises in Paju, north of Seoul, and confiscate evidence, including digital files and surveillance footage, officials said.
Law enforcement authorities are investigating the suspected rigging of Internet news comments by the 48-year-old surnamed Kim, who’s now been charged along with two accomplices over the scandal. Kim, who goes by the nickname “Druking”, is alleged to have used a software program to jack up the number of clicks in support of the president.
The incident has sparked a fierce political dispute ahead of the June 13 local elections, as Rep. Kim Kyoung-soo of the ruling Democratic Party, a close aide to President Moon, is known to have been in contact with Druking for years.
The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency on Friday said Kim had sent Druking messages that contained the web addresses of certain news articles related to the president. [Yonhap]
