Opposition Party Unveils Kraken to Monitor Public Opinion Manipulation
System to Prevent 'Second Deuring Incident'
Growing Political Awareness of SNS Opinion Warfare
'CA Scandal' Also a Hot Issue in the US
Yoon Seok-yeol, the People Power Party's presidential candidate (second from the right), is receiving a silk pouch from Lee Jun-seok, the party leader (second from the left), at the Supreme Council meeting held at the National Assembly in Yeouido, Seoul, on the morning of the 8th. / Photo by Yonhap News
[Asia Economy Reporter Lim Juhyung] The so-called 'Silk Pouch' No. 1 that Lee Jun-seok, leader of the People Power Party, delivered to presidential candidate Yoon Seok-yeol has been revealed as 'Kraken.' It is a system that reports suspected signs of public opinion manipulation detected on social networking services (SNS) to the Central Election Commission. It appears to be aimed at the 'Druking incident,' which sparked controversy due to large-scale online comment manipulation allegations during the last presidential election.
As the main stage of election campaigns has shifted to online spaces such as SNS and internet news, the political sphere's attitude toward 'public opinion manipulation' has become more serious. This trend is intensifying not only in Korea but also in advanced democracies like the United States.
◆Opposition Reveals Kraken to Catch Kingcrab
On the 11th, Lee explained on his Facebook post about Kraken, saying, "It became Silk Pouch No. 1 because it came out first in order," and added, "It is an essential element during elections, and Representative Lee Young and the Digital Party Committee members have been maintaining security well while preparing it."
He emphasized, "It is our online THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) against the ruling party that manipulates public opinion all over the internet." Comparing Kraken to an advanced defense system that blocks strategic weapons, he praised it highly.
According to multiple media reports, Kraken is a system that analyzes keywords in news articles or comments posted on SNS and reports suspected public opinion manipulation to the Central Election Commission. It uses a technology commonly called 'web crawling,' which extracts specific data from the internet. The system is operated jointly by artificial intelligence (AI) and regular staff.
The 'Kraken' disclosed by Lee appears to be a measure to prevent a recurrence of incidents like the so-called 'Druking comment manipulation case.' The Druking case involved Kim Dong-won and his group, who used a macro program called 'Kingcrab' to manipulate online comments and were sentenced to prison. Investigations revealed that Kim operated Kingcrab during the 2016 presidential election to help elect Moon Jae-in, the Democratic Party candidate.
In the process, former Gyeongnam Governor Kim Kyung-soo, who was accused of conspiring with Kim to obstruct the website's comment ranking operations (computer-related obstruction of business) and of offering the position of Consul General in Sendai, Japan, to Kim's close associate lawyer Do Mo (violation of the Public Official Election Act), was sentenced to two years in prison in July and was removed from office.
At that time, the Supreme Court acquitted former Governor Kim of the Public Official Election Act violation but upheld the original ruling recognizing the charges of computer-related obstruction of business and others.
◆SNS Public Opinion Battles Also a 'Hot Potato' in the U.S.
As the importance of 'online public opinion' in determining election outcomes has increased, political awareness of this issue has also grown. This problem has emerged as a new challenge not only domestically but also in the United States, where democracy has a long history.
In the U.S., the 'Cambridge Analytica (CA) incident' sparked controversy over public opinion manipulation. CA, a data analysis company based in the UK, collected data from 87 million Facebook users during the 2016 presidential election when Donald Trump was elected and used it for political campaigns.
Logo of the UK big data analytics company 'Cambridge Analytica (CA)'. CA is known to have collected data from tens of millions of Facebook users during the 2016 US presidential election to assist the Republican election campaign. / Photo by Wikipedia capture
The Republican campaign slogan, which was credited with decisively contributing to Trump's victory, 'defeat crooked Hillary,' was reportedly produced through consulting by this company.
The CA incident did not involve operating a program that directly manipulated public opinion like Druking. However, it faced criticism for abusing data science by collecting voters' personal information and using it for election advertising.
Brittany Kaiser, a former CA employee who became a whistleblower in 2018, warned in her memoir that "democracy could be threatened by SNS platforms like Facebook," which attracted significant attention.
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