[Asian Games] Portal Daum Suspends Cheering Service Amid "Majority Support for China" Controversy

Higher Proportion of Chinese Supporters at Korea-China Match
Ruling Party: "'China Gate' Comes to Mind"

Portal site Daum suspended its related service after controversy arose over the fact that there were more supporters for China than Korea on the cheering page during the men's football quarterfinal match between Korea and China at the Hangzhou Asian Games.

Daum Sports announced on the 2nd, "Recently, cases of abusing the purpose of 'click cheering' have occurred, causing unnecessary misunderstandings, so the service will be suspended for the time being," adding, "We are working on revamping the game center with the second half of the year as the target."

The 'click cheering' service had been provided by Daum to allow anyone to easily cheer while watching sports games without login or limits on the number of clicks.

In the Korea-China quarterfinal match held the previous day at the Asian Games, Korea won 2-0 against China, but on Daum's cheering page, the proportion of support for the Chinese team temporarily exceeded 90%.

By around 10 p.m., near the end of the match, the proportion of clicks supporting China dropped to 55% (1,196,022 clicks), but it was still higher than the proportion supporting Korea.

On the other hand, at the same time, the proportion of support for China on Naver's cheering page was around 10%.

As a result, portal users and social networking services (SNS) expressed strong surprise that the proportion of support for China was higher even though Daum is a Korean portal.

Especially since Daum has long been involved in political conflicts over controversies such as 'left-leaning bias' related to news exposure algorithms, related comments, and the operation of 'Daum Agora,' this cheering controversy spread further.

The People Power Party officially raised suspicions of public opinion manipulation through a statement that day.

Kim Jeong-sik, the youth spokesperson, pointed out in the statement, "It is clearly a tally far from common sense that more than half of the support on Korea's largest portal is for the Chinese team," and claimed, "It reminds us of the 'China Gate' suspected by South Korea, the United States, and other free world countries for several years."

'China Gate' refers to allegations that ethnic Koreans in China and Chinese international students systematically manipulate domestic public opinion through online communities, portal news comments, and SNS.

Assemblywoman Kim Mi-ae also posted a screenshot of Daum's cheering site on Facebook showing that support for the Chinese team reached 1.18 million clicks, accounting for 56% during the first half of the football match the previous day, questioning, "Why is there more support for China on a Korean portal?"

The reason why the cheering results differed significantly between Daum and Naver is interpreted as being due to differences in the participation methods themselves.

Both Daum and Naver provided lineups of the two countries' players, text commentary, and match records on their cheering pages, but while Naver required login to click for cheering, Daum allowed unlimited cheering clicks without separate login.

However, both Daum and Naver have been blocked from access in China since January 2019 and last May respectively, leading to analyses that someone may have installed a 'macro' (automatic input repetition) program to manipulate public opinion.