PM orders pan-gov’t taskforce to tackle suspected opinion manipulation on portal Daum

Prime Minister Han Duck-soo on Wednesday gave instructions for the formation of an inter-ministerial taskforce to prevent the recurrence of suspected manipulation of public opinion on the nation’s No. 2 online portal Daum on its Asian Games cheering pages.

Han made the instruction after receiving an emergency report from the Korea Communications Commission (KCC) that about 80 percent of cheering clicks for the Chinese team on a Daum sports page during the Asian Games men’s football quarterfinal match between South Korea and China on Sunday came from abroad.

The controversy erupted after the ratio of cheering clicks for the Chinese team reached 91 percent, compared with a mere 9 percent for the South Korean team, on the Seoul-based portal site during the Asian Games match in Hangzhou, China.

The KCC said its analysis of 31.3 million cheering clicks, with 22.94 million IPs confirmed, during the South Korea-China football match found that about half of them came via the Netherlands and another 30 percent via Japan.

In particular, the KCC suspected that foreign forces used virtual private networks to create bypass connections as if they were domestic netizens or to generate large numbers of cheering comments for China by manipulating macros.

In response, Han instructed the KCC to create a pan-government taskforce together with the justice, science and technology, culture and other relevant government agencies to devise measures to prevent the distortion and manipulation of public opinion.

“Fake news is a serious social disaster that shakes the foundation of democracy,” Han said, ordering that the taskforce come up with legislative and other measures to prevent the recurrence of similar incidents.

Earlier in the day, the leader of the ruling People Power Party (PPP) raised suspicion that Daum could be used as a means to manipulate public opinion ahead of next year’s general elections.

PPP Chairman Kim Gi-hyeon expressed such a suspicion about Daum in a Facebook post, referring to the suspected manipulation of cheering clicks during the Asian Games men’s football quarterfinal match.

“I can hardly shake the suspicion that Daum could be serving as a host for manipulating public opinion,” Kim said, noting that the ratio of cheerers for North and South Korea reached 75 percent and 25 percent, respectively, on the Seoul-based portal during last Saturday’s women’s football quarterfinal match between the two Koreas.

“Given that such incidents occurred on Daum, a portal site known for its strong left-leaning tendency, I cannot help but raise a serious question as to whether the specter of public opinion manipulation is being revived again ahead of next year’s general elections,” Kim said.

He then called for some thorough fact-finding, saying that suspicion that a maneuver may be underway somewhere now to overturn the election results by manipulating public opinion cannot be seen as unfounded.

Kim also asked Daum to immediately conduct a self-investigation and cooperate with the authorities’ investigation into the problems.