Internet harassment roils South Korea

updated 3:51 p.m. ET March 3, 2006

SEOUL, South Korea - Kim Hyo-bi doesn't want her picture taken any more. Not after the 22-year-old student's portrait wound up on a photo-sharing Web site last summer with her face colored and distorted to make her look silly, titled alongside the original as "Before and After."

She tried to simply forget about it, but she couldn't. She was barraged with calls from friends who saw the page, and the humiliation and feeling of being violated caused her several sleepless nights.

"I always thought that it is something (that) only could happen to other people," Kim said.

South Korea is the world's most wired country, boasting the highest per capita rate of broadband Internet connections. But there is a growing sense that high-tech prowess hasn't been matched by the development of a mature online society, creating a growing problem of what is known here as "cyberviolence."

That includes anything from online insults to sexual harassment and cyberstalking, and complaints over such offenses more than doubled last year to 8,406, according to the Korea Internet Safety Commission. The most complaints were for slander, which tripled to 3,933 cases in 2005.

This winter, prosecutors broadened their campaign against online harassment and brought the first case against Internet users for comments they had posted on the public feedback section of a Web site.

The case was brought by Lim Soo-kyoung, a controversial figure who was imprisoned for three years after an illegal visit to North Korea in 1989. She filed a complaint against 25 people for making allegedly offensive comments on Web sites about a news report on her son's drowning death in the Philippines. Among the thousands of comments were remarks scoffing at the death and using insulting language in reference to Lim's past history with the North.

Prosecutors have called for summary judgment against all 25 defendants, who will be charged with criminal contempt or slander and face a fine of 1 million won ($1,030), said Seok Dong-hyun, a Seoul city prosecutor in charge of the case.

"We felt a strong need to stop this practice as soon as possible," Seok said.

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