Kelly & Juna Moon Reporting of & Seoulnews1
Park Han-Shin, who lost his brother in the Jeju air crash, was accused of being a “false member of the bereaved family”
A plane crash in South Korea last December left Park Guen-Woo an orphan. The 22 -year -old had barely found space to cry his parents when he met a torrent of online abuse, plots and malicious jokes made about the victims.
Jeju’s airplane, which came back from Bangkok, Thailand, accidental at Muan International Airport on December 29 and exploded after hitting a concrete barrier at the end of the track, killing 179 of the 181 people on board.
Police surveys have identified and apprehended eight people accused of having published derogatory and defamatory online publications. These were suggestions that families were “delighted” to receive compensation from the authorities, or that they were “false victims” – insofar as some felt forced to prove that they had lost their loved ones.
The authorities have eliminated at least 427 of these positions.
But this is not the first time that families bereaved in South Korea have been the objectives of online abuses. Addressing the BBC, experts have described a culture where economic difficulties, financial desire and social problems such as toxic competitiveness fuel hatred discourse.
Financial resentment
After the crushing of the Halloween crowd of Seoul in 2022, the victims and the bereaved families were also coated. A man who lost his son in the incident had his photo tank by hate groups – showing him laughing after receiving compensation.
People whose loved ones died in the ferry flowing in 2014 – a maritime disaster that saw 304 people killed, mainly schoolchildren – have also been the target of hatred speech.
The tragedy saw the government pay an average of 420 million won ($ 292,840; £ 231,686) per victim – triggering comments which claimed that this figure was unreasonably high.
“People who live day after day think that remuneration is overfeited and say that bereaved people get” unfair treatment “and that they are doing a big problem when everyone’s life is difficult,” professor of sociology at Sungkyunkwan University told Kooo Jeongkwan, told News The Korea Herald.
In comments subsequent to the BBC, Professor Koo suggested that economic stress and a competitive labor market – in particular in the wake of Covid – have left many people to feel socially isolated, exacerbating the issue of hate speech.
Many South Koreans, he says, “now consider others not as their peers, but as opponents”, pointing to a generalized culture of comparison in South Korea.
“We tend to compare a lot … If you put someone else, it is easier to feel superior yourself,” he told the BBC. “This is why there is a little trend in Korea to engage in hate speeches or make derogatory remarks, aimed at reducing others to raise themselves.”
BBC Korean / Jungmin Choi
Park Guen-Woo, 22, lost both parents in the accident
Mr. Park says that the families of Jeju accident victims were characterized as “parasites was waving money from the nation”.
For example, he refers to a recent article on an emergency fund of three million wons ($ 2,055; £ 1,632) which was collected for bereaved donations. This article encountered a flood of malicious comments, many referring to the erroneous suggestion that taxpayers’ money was used for the fund.
“It seems that the families of the victims of Muan airport hit the jackpot. They must be secretly delighted,” said one of these comments.
Mr. Park says that these comments were “overwhelming”.
“Even if compensation for the accident arrives, how could we feel as if it is the price of the life of our loved ones?” he said. “Each of these comments cuts us deeply. We are not here to earn money.”
“Too many people, instead of being sensitive, build their entertainment on the suffering of others,” he adds. “When something like it happens, they depreciate it and spit hateful remarks.”
Joshua Uyheng, professor of psychology in the Philippines who studies online hatred, says that hatred is often “directed towards (these) that we think of obtaining a certain advantage at our expense”.
“We feel hatred when we (think we) get the short end of the stick.”
“Take advantage of other” pain “
In the case of Jeju’s air accident, the political dynamic has only won things.
The accident occurred in the midst of a period of political disturbances in South Korea, the country in shock from the shock decision of the suspended president Yoon Suk Yeol to promulgate martial law – an incident that has politically divided the country.
Many supporters of the Power of Power of Persons on the right of President Yoon have, without evidence, pinned up for the accident on the main Democratic Party of the Opposition (DP), stressing the fact that Muan Airport was originally built in the context of a political commitment by the DP.
“The tragedy of Muan airport is an artificial disaster caused by the DP,” read a comment on YouTube. Another described it as “100% the fault” of the party.
Park Han-Shin, whose brother died in the plane crash, says he was accused of being a DP member and “false member of the bereaved family”. These statements were so extensive that his daughter went to social networks to call them.
“It makes me deeply see my father, who lost his brother in such a tragedy, being labeled a” crook “. It also makes me fear that this disinformation can lead my father to make bad choices of despair,” she wrote on the sons two days after the incident.
Park Han-Shin says he is amazed by the way people seem to “enjoy the pain of others”.
“It is just not something that a human being should do,” he told BBC.
“I am just an ordinary citizen. I am not here to enter politics. I came to discover the truth about the death of my younger brother.”
News1
Police arrested six people in connection with hateful comments against people associated with the victims of the Jeju air accident
Although there are no perfect hate solutions, experts say that social media societies should establish policies on what constitutes a speech of hatred and moderate content published on their platforms accordingly.
“Online users should be able to gently report publications and malicious comments, and platform companies must actively delete this content,” said Professor Koo. The organizations responsible for the application of laws should also take the authors on the task, he adds.
Reminding people their common identity can also help, explains Professor Uyheng.
“The less people feel that they are at the opposite ends of a zero-sum game, perhaps the more they can feel that tragedies like these are the shared concern of all of us-and that the victims deserve empathy and compassion, not vitriol and conviction.”
