Ruling party vows to investigate allegations of China’s influence operations

The Korea Times

The Korea Times

National

Mon, December 4, 2023 | 14:53

Foreign Affairs

Ruling party vows to investigate China's alleged influence operations

Posted : 2023-10-03 15:46

Updated : 2023-10-04 14:43

Hong Hyun-seok of South Korea, left, controls the ball during a quarterfinal match against China during the Asian Games at Huanglong Sports Centre Stadium in Hangzhou, China, Sunday. Yonhap

Search giant suspends online support poll for Asiad after questionable results

By Jung Min-ho

The ruling People Power Party (PPP) will propose a bill to prevent other countries' potential manipulation of online opinions here, following a questionable online event result which it suspects shows China's attempts to influence public opinion here.

The party's stance has come after Daum, a Korean search giant, launched a feature where sports fans can express their support by selecting a team to root for at the Hangzhou Asian Games.

But after millions of questionable clicks were detected during Korea’s football game against China on Sunday night, the company said the following day that it decided to suspend the function to prevent “unnecessary misunderstanding.”

The move came amid suspicion that Beijing exploited the function as part of its global online influence campaign. By Monday afternoon, more than 20 million clicks were garnered for the Chinese football team, compared with some 2 million clicks for the Korean athletes. This result raised the eyebrows of many here, given that Daum focuses almost exclusively on Korean services.

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Speaking to reporters at the National Assembly on Tuesday, Rep. Park Sung-joong of the PPP said the result was the latest example of China’s attempts to manipulate online opinion here and vowed to take legislative action.

“The National Assembly will overhaul laws against such manipulation, including perpetrators, accomplices and web portal companies that neglect it,” he said.

Park said the different result of a similar service by Naver, another Korean search engine, added speculation, as it showed 5.6 million people, or 94 percent of the total event participants, supporting the Korean team.

He vowed to investigate the issue through parliamentary inspections slated for later this month, urging the two tech giants to take their own measures to dispel such worries. Otherwise, revised laws may close the news comment sections on their sites entirely, he warned.

With a by-election for the chief of Gangseo District Office in Seoul set to be held next week and the general elections slated for April next year, Park said agents of Beijing or Pyongyang could well try to influence election results through disinformation campaigns against certain candidates to help elect their competitors.

His concern follows an announcement by Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, about a month ago. The company said that it took down 7,704 Facebook accounts, 954 Facebook pages, 15 Facebook groups and 15 Instagram accounts tied to China’s influence operations. Chinese law enforcement appeared to work on the campaign from offices spread throughout the country, the company said. A plethora of other social media accounts also participated in the campaign, its report found.

In a separate statement, the PPP said the Daum issue should be taken seriously, mentioning a massive opinion-rigging scandal in which former South Gyeongsang Province Governor Kim Kyoung-soo was given a two-year prison sentence for attempting to rig public opinion ahead of the 2017 presidential election in favor of the then-Democratic Party of Korea presidential candidate Moon Jae-in.

“This is not the first time that allegations of opinion meddling by Chinese or North Koreans have been brought up,” the party said. “Given the seriousness of the matter, it should be probed and the facts about the incident should be established."

Some have raised the possibility that a macro program may have been used to generate unusually high click numbers against Team Korea, which was also observed during other Asiad events including the Sept. 28 women's football game with Hong Kong.

mj6c2@koreatimes.co.kr