Internet harassment roils South Korea

Online humiliation
One of the most well-known recent cases of online humiliation involved a woman who failed to clean up after her dog defecated inside a subway car last year. Another passenger took a photo with a mobile phone and posted it, drawing widespread condemnation from Internet users.

Now, law enforcement and the government are taking action.

Trying to prevent anonymous attacks, the government said in December it would require Web sites to confirm users' real names before they can post. Many South Korean Web sites already require users to enter their national identification numbers to get accounts, which are verified through a government system.

The government says a bill on the real-name authentication will be submitted to the National Assembly in the first half of this year.

To Kim Bi-hwan, a political science professor at Sungkyunkwan University, cyberviolence won't be solved by official intervention. He said the maturity of country's Internet society hasn't kept pace with technological innovation.

"Promoting a self-examination of Internet society should come before trying to restrict Internet users by any regulations," he said. "Otherwise the same problems will keep occurring in different forms."

Hooked on the habit?
Kwak Keum-joo, a psychology professor at Seoul National University who has studied the issue, said people who post malicious remarks often get hooked on the habit of seeing others respond to their inflammatory remarks.

When they don't get the response they want, "they get angry and also tend to act more aggressively as they are granted anonymity," she said.

Some Web sites are taking matters into their own hands, seeking to actively filter comments. South Korea's Cyworld site, home to a hugely popular blog hosting service with 17 million registered members, has 115 employees who encourage proper Internet etiquette and another 20 monitoring for malicious remarks and slander.

Victims of cyberviolence can suffer from insomnia along with anger and feelings of insecurity, said psychiatrist Kim Jin-se, who has treated patients with the issue. Soothing them isn't easy, Kim said, because the problem causing their troubles, the Internet, has become an indispensable part of daily life.

He suggested those who are targeted try to ignore the abuse or simply stay offline for a while.

Kim, the student whose picture was altered, said she felt she couldn't go to police with her complaints because she feared it might actually have been posted by a friend. She said she never put the photo on the Web and doesn't know how it got there.

She now warns friends not to use her photo on the Web and remains keenly aware of any cameras around her. In South Korea, of course, cameras are essentially everywhere, since most mobile phones have them.

On a recent shopping trip, Kim was startled by the sound of camera shutters and the sight of flashes.

"Unfortunately," she said, "it still irritates me."

MORE FROM SECURITY

Security Section Front

The biggest security threats in 2010   Citigroup denies computer-system breach Twitter temporarily hacked, now up White House picks new cyber czar Pentagon: Insurgents intercepted spy videos Privacy watchdog files complaint against Facebook Ohio court: Cell phone searches require warrant Nearly 1 in 3 older teens gets ‘sexting’ messages Australia to block obscene, crime-linked sites After criticism, Facebook tweaks settings again Security Section Front   Add Security headlines to your news reader: