Some folks, like Ms. Kim, have paid a worth. On-line harassers labeled her a “cougar,” suggesting she used intercourse to proselytize to a youthful man. Others mentioned that, ought to she get pregnant, the toddler ought to endure a paternity take a look at. Officers within the metropolis of Busan debunked the rumors, however they continued to unfold on-line.
As soon as discharged, she filed complaints with a serious net portal to take away the pretend content material. However after making an attempt to hound dozens of blogs, she gave up. “There have been too a lot of them,” she mentioned.
The worldwide combat in opposition to the pandemic has raised privateness issues throughout international locations. Governments, together with these of Italy, Israel and Singapore, have used cellphone information to trace probably contaminated folks and their contacts. China has employed cell phone apps with little disclosure about how they observe folks. Venezuela has urged neighbors to show one another in.
South Korea, an intensely linked nation the place practically everybody totes a smartphone, has taken these efforts a step past. Along with making some private information public, the authorities typically use it to ship textual content messages to folks whose mobile information historical past signifies they have been in proximity to an contaminated particular person. Apart from China, South Korea is just about the one nation on this planet whose authorities has the facility to gather such information at will throughout an epidemic, in accordance with Prof. Park.
Within the preliminary determined months of the pandemic, authorities web sites uploaded an in depth sketch of every affected person’s day by day life till they have been identified and remoted. The federal government didn’t reveal sufferers’ names however typically launched revealing information equivalent to their addresses and employers.
That rush of knowledge fed a rising tradition of on-line harassment. In South Korea, doxxing — digging up and publishing malicious private info — had already been a rising downside, usually cited in the recent suicides of K-pop stars.
Eating places visited by sufferers have been typically handled as in the event that they have been cursed. Citing one feminine affected person’s frequent visits to karaoke parlors, on-line trolls claimed that she should be a prostitute. Homosexual South Koreans started to worry being outed, prompting the federal government to vow them anonymity in testing after an outbreak erupted at a homosexual membership in Seoul in Could.
