The Peninsula

Robust Online Political Discourse Carries Side Effects

This briefing comes from Korea View, a weekly newsletter published by the Korea Economic Institute. Korea View aims to cover developments that reveal trends on the Korean Peninsula but receive little attention in the United States. If you would like to sign up, please find the online form here.

What Happened

• Many online platforms served as venues for the political debate around the controversial confirmation of Justice Minister-designate Cho Kuk.
• Supporters and detractors engaged in online campaigns to elevate their respective taglines on the ranking of most-searched keywords on major search portals.
• A group of petitioners claimed that detractors attempted to reduce the credibility of their online petition by using fake accounts and uploading hoax signatures.

Implications: While the high rate of online penetration has been an economic boon to South Korea, the absence of vigilant monitoring on online platforms have raised concerns that savvy users may hijack the algorithm to manipulate political discourse. Both detractors and supporters of Justice Minister Cho Kuk’s confirmation mobilized users to input specific taglines into the search bars of popular online portals, causing key phrases to appear in real-time search rankings. Their aim was to influence public opinion. Observers have also raised suspicions that automated programs were used to boost these search terms. Similarly, some activists have alleged that fake accounts were being used to both inflate and sabotage online petitions. With limited progress from the public or private sectors to control this abuse, civil society leaders worry that these tactics will pose threats to the credibility of democratic institutions and processes.

Context: Concerns around misinformation and public opinion manipulation are acute in South Korea because of the country’s extensive smartphone and internet penetration. The courts recently convicted power-blogger Kim Dong-won for engaging in an illicit cyber-operation to influence public opinion. Kim ran a computer program to artificially inflate the number of “likes” on online comments to boost positive public sentiment for then-candidate Moon Jae-in ahead of the 2017 election. Although the problem had been previously acknowledged, this scandal created a very public spotlight on the risks posed by digital technology.

Korea View was edited by Yong Kwon with the help of Soojin Hwang, Hyoshin Kim, and Rachel Kirsch.

Picture from user TFurban on flickr