Families attacked online after South Korea’s plane crash

A Air crash in South Korea Last December, the orphans were left by the Gen-Vu Park. A 22-year-old guy barely found a place to mourn his parents when he came across a torrent abuse on the Internet, conspiracy and malicious jokes made about the victims.

On December 29, on December 29, at the Muan International Airport, returning from Bangkok, in Thailand, an accident at Muan International Airport and exploded after a concrete barrier, killed 179 out of 181 at the end of the runway.

Police investigations have discovered and detained eight people who were accused of obtaining humiliating and defamatory internet post. These included the opinion that the families were “delighted” to get compensation from the authorities, or that they “fake victims” – to the extent that some felt forced to prove that they had lost their loved ones.

Authorities removed at least 427 such messages.

But this is not the first time the families of the dead in South Korea were the targets of abuse on the Internet. Speaking to the BBC, experts described a culture where economic struggle, financial envy and social problems, such as toxic competitiveness, feed the language of hatred.

Following the Seoul A crowd of Halloween crushed in 2022The victims and the dead families were similarly smeared. The man who lost his son in the incident was a photo of hatred groups – showing that he laughs after receiving compensation.

People whose loved ones died on the Sewol ferry, which was immersed in 2014 – a sea disaster in which 304 people were killed, mostly schoolchildren were also the goal of hatred.

In the tragedy, the government paid an average of 420 million won ($ 292,840; 231,686 pounds) for the victim – causing comments claiming that this figure was unreasonable.

“People who live every day feel that the compensation is overestimated and say that the dead are getting” unfair treatment “and that they do a great deal when everyone’s life is difficult,” Koo Jeong-Woo said at SungKyunkwan University.

In the following comments to the BBC, Professor Ku suggested that economic stress and competitive job market – especially as a result COVID – left a lot of people to feel socially isolated, enhancing the issue of hatred.

Many southern Koreans, he said, now “view others as their peers, but as opponents,” pointing to a broad culture of comparison in South Korea.

“We usually compare a lot … If you lower anyone else, it is easier to feel higher,” he said BBC. “That is why in Korea there is a little tendency to participate in the language of hatred or to make humiliating remarks, trying to reduce others to exalt itself.”

Mr. Park says that the families of the Jeju plane crash are characterized as “parasites that are being wasted of the country.”

As an example, he refers to a recent article about the three million won (2 055 dollars; 1632 pounds), which was assembled for the dead at the expense of donations. This article was met with the flood of malicious comments, many referred to the misconception that taxpayers were used for the fund.

“It seems that the families of the Muan Airport’s victims are in the jackpot. They should be secretly delighted,” one such comment said.

Mr. Park says these comments were “preferred”.

“Even when compensation for the accident comes as we could feel like a recklessly spending it when it is the price of our loved ones?” he says. “Each of these comments is deeply reduced. We are not here to make money.”

“Too many people, instead of being sensitive, build their entertainment on the suffering of others,” he adds. “When something like this happens, they humiliate it and advocate the hated remarks.”

Joshua Uicen, a professor of psychology in the Philippines, who studies hatred on the Internet, says that hatred is often “aimed at (those) that we believe that they get a certain advantage at our expense.”

“We feel hatred when we (think we get a short end of the stick.”

In the case of the Jeju plane crash, political dynamics have only aggravated things.

The accident occurred among the period of political turmoil in South Korea, when the country’s stroke decision Yuan Suka Jola to make martial law – an incident that has politically shared the country.

Many supporters of the right -wing president’s right party, without evidence, were guilty for the catastrophe in the Main Opposition Democratic Party (DP), pointing out that Muang’s airport was originally built as part of the DP political posts.

“The Muan Airport Airport is a man-made disaster caused by DP,” read one comment on YouTube. Another described this as “100% fault” the party.

Han Shin Park, whose brother died in a plane crash, says he was accused of being a dp member and a “fake family member”. These statements were so wide that his daughter came into social media to summon them.

“It hurts me deeply to see my father, who lost my brother in such a tragedy when I called a” fraud “. It also makes me experience that this misinformation can make my father make the wrong choice,” she wrote on top two days after the incident.

The Han Shin Park says it is stunned by the way people seem to “like to use others’ pain.

“It’s just not what a person should do,” he said to the BBC.

“I’m just an ordinary citizen. I’m not here to enter politics. I came to know the truth about the death of my younger brother.”

Although there are no perfect solutions for hatred, experts say that companies on social media need to establish a policy of what is a hatred language and moderate content posted on their platforms respectively.

“Internet users should be able to smoothly report malicious messages and comments, and platform companies should actively delete such content,” says Professor Ku. Law enforcement agencies must also take criminals, he adds.

Reminding people of their overall identity, Professor Uicnga says.

“The fewer people feel that they are at the opposite ends of the game with zero, perhaps the more they can feel that such tragedies are common concern with all of us – and that the victims deserve empathy and compassion, not showcase and condemnation.”