Korean cyber attack on 2-channel
Just when you’d expect South Korea’s uber-nationalistic netizens to be celebrating their country’s first figure skating gold medal, this happens:
South Korean Net users were angered last Wednesday when a Japanese user alleged on a 2-channel message board that figure skating star Kim bribed judges to edge out her rival Mao Asada of Japan, Yonhap said.
More than 10,000 South Korean users coordinated their attacks through South Korean Web communities to attack the Japanese site on Monday, the day that marks the 91st anniversary of the March 1, 1919 independence movement.
South Korean users attacked the Web page until 30 message boards out of 33 shut down from a server overload, the news agency said.
South Korean users recently opened a Web community to plan cyber attacks targeting the Japanese Web site, and have amassed more than 77,000 members, according to Yonhap.
The video embedded at the top of this post, a Korean-subbed version of a sort of investigative report by NTV’s Bankisha, also seems to have ignited anger. The report looks into why there was such a huge point gap between Mao Asada and Yuna Kim. It includes an interview with Russian skater Yevgeny Plushenko, who says that Mao should have received a higher score. It is the most-viewed video on YouTube South Korea today and has a comment thread with hundreds of messages expressing anti-Japanese hate.
Update: Brian points out that the Korea Times is reporting that the attack on 2-channel was also triggered by hateful comments made about the murder of a Korean student in Russia. Those familiar with 2-channel are probably aware of the fact that all Korea-related threads (and even most threads unrelated to Korea) are often full of anti-Korean troll postings, so it’s unclear why the sudden mobilization of anti-2-channel cyber warriors has taken place now.
[hat tip to VGS]
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