In a recent development, concerns have been raised by a domestic research team regarding potential interference by Chinese individuals in South Korean presidential and local elections through comments on the widely used portal site ‘Naver.’
Individuals engaging in these online comments were notable for their criticism of the People Power Party (PPP) candidate and vocal support for the Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) candidate. Leading up to the 20th presidential election last year, the then-PPP candidate, Yoon Suk-yeol, faced derogatory terms such as ‘Room Salon uppercut,’ accompanied by warnings of potential national collapse and war if he were elected. Similarly, the DPK candidate, Lee Jae-myung, was addressed as ‘His Imperial Majesty.’ The comments also included negative remarks about individuals supporting the PPP, men in their 60s, and the Yeongnam (Gyeongsang Province) region.
On Dec. 27, Professor Yun Min-woo, from the Department of Police Science & Security Studies at Gachon University, shared that his research team had detected suspected organized comment activities from the Chinese side. Utilizing big data analysis with web crawling on Naver news comments, the team identified over 50 accounts engaged in organized comment activities expressing Chinese superiority and criticizing Korea-U.S. and Korea-Japan relationships. Most notably, these activities peaked during the months of September to November, with over 30,000 comments recorded. An account named ‘참붕어빵’ (Cham Bungeoppang) posted an average of over 130 comments per day during this period.
The identified accounts shared characteristics with suspected Chinese comment manipulation accounts disclosed by the U.S. Department of State’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) and the European External Action Service (EEAS). Account names often reflected Chinese-style transliterations or grammar, and comments consistently featured spelling errors.
Professor Yun noted, “The content of the Chinese comment manipulation activity confirmed in foreign countries is almost identical when written in Korean and disseminated, leaving no choice but to see it as organized intervention.” These accounts were found to follow each other, forming a network, and liking each other’s comments to increase visibility on articles.
The research team categorized Chinese manipulation comments into eight types based on their content, covering pro-China sentiments, international relations analysis from a Chinese perspective, derogatory remarks about Korean culture and people, support for pro-China figures, and criticism of anti-China politicians.
In a more in-depth investigation, the team selected three of the 50 manipulation comment accounts, serving as network hubs, and scrutinized all the comments they left on Naver news pages from May 2019 to September of this year. The results confirmed that the Chinese side left various negative comments about PPP candidates in the 2021-2022 presidential and local elections while consistently posting supportive comments for DPK candidates. The repetition of similar content across various related news articles raises concerns about the extent of this organized interference.
