Posting 'Coordinates' and Pro-Yoon Seok-yeol Comments
Political Circle Criticizes Comment Manipulation but Practically Neglects It
[Asia Economy Reporter Park Jun-yi] ‘Just get elected president and abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family. Let’s suppress this quickly!’
It has been confirmed that a men's organization instructed its members through a messenger app to engage in organized comment activities supporting Yoon Seok-yeol, the presidential candidate of the People Power Party. With the goal of abolishing the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family (여가부), they began actively supporting Yoon by posting comments defending the candidate or rebutting opposing opinions on various reports related to him. However, criticism is rising that the political sphere is neglecting the issue and instead fueling gender conflicts.
According to our investigation on the 28th, this men's group is encouraging collective commenting by sharing links to reports about Yoon through the messenger app ‘Discord’. Their main objective is the abolition of the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, but to achieve this, they support Yoon. Just the day before, the group leader shared a live interview video of Yoon on the ‘Media Purification Team’ channel within Discord and urged members to write comments. They also shared links to reports about Lee Jae-myung, the Democratic Party presidential candidate, and controversies surrounding Yoon’s association with shamans, saying "Let’s fight back" and "Let’s show our firepower."
This group has 20,000 members on a portal cafe and about 6,000 simultaneous users on Discord as of 8 p.m. They began active support activities from the moment Yoon announced his pledge to abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family on the 8th. On the 4th of last month, they also held a rally in front of the People Power Party’s central office in Yeouido demanding the resignation of Professor Lee Soo-jung from Kyonggi University’s Department of Criminal Psychology from the election campaign headquarters.
The problem is that while Lee Jun-seok, the leader of the People Power Party, is emphasizing ‘comment manipulation defense’ by promoting the software ‘Kraken’, the party currently only manages comments attacking Yoon. Lee Young, a lawmaker who was head of the digital headquarters in the campaign, said in a phone interview, "We do not detect or supervise any comment activities other than those that slander or attack Yoon." A Democratic Party campaign official also stated, "There is no system to manage comment manipulation."
Lee Kwang-jae, Secretary General of the Manifesto Practice Headquarters, said, "Such online activities are not illegal under current election laws, but they are dangerous acts that suppress others’ expression of opinion and undermine public interest," adding, "The political sphere should be able to mediate conflicts such as gender issues during the election period, but instead, it is neglecting or exploiting them."
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