On March 23, Incheon District Court reached a verdict on a defamation trial stemming from the internet world. The accused was charged for constantly insulting the plaintiff’s gaming nickname for about a month while playing an online game. As a result, the accused was fined two million won. The judgement came as a surprise, since all former cases where a defendant was charged with insulting someone’s gaming name or chat site nickname, ended with the person being declared innocent.

Korea is the most advanced internet nation. Koreans use the internet and upgrade or even develop a lot more than any other country. However, our online moral consciousness is the worst among internet using countries. These days, “you have to win the game to protect your family and yourself,” is a common expression for many gamers in Korea and it means, if you do not play your best in game or if you lose, members of your own team and your opponents, will egregiously insult your family, not just in a jovial mocking manner but rather will offend them sexually, especially your parents. Besides the family, they will insult you too. Some of the offenders keep following you and constantly insulting you for several weeks.

Those kinds of insults don’t end up in only games. Across the Internet community is ‘Ilbe’ one of the most famous community site for insults. It started with just funny posts. However, as the ultranationalists flowed into the community, they started to insult the former President of Korea and those who were in the Progressive Party, and praise former Conservative Party presidents. They also insulted and mocked those who do not follow their ideas, and distorted history about when people revolted against former Conservative Party presidents.

Malicious comments have been social problem for a long time. Korea’s biggest portal site ‘Naver’ is offering online news for people. Along with the online news, they provide an anonymous comment service to everyone in the name of freedom of expression. Needless to say, people post malicious comments. People using the anonymous comment service always blame someone else and insult other people, they just ignore the news story and simply post whatever they want to say. For example, even though a news story could be about rescuing an abandoned cat, people would use the comment section to insult each other and blame the current President or anyone else who was either in the news or commented on it.

Koreans need to take a good hard look at themselves. Playing games are supposed to be fun things we do in our free time and the time shouldn’t be spent having to protect our innocent families.  Furthermore, chatting online should be simply for people to have conversations and not to hurt someone else. We have been hiding behind our keyboards and insulting others in the name of the freedom of expression or anonymity for some time now. It is time to come forward from our keyboards and have the decency to say those same thoughts to a person’s face if we feel they have to be said. Courts are now more broadly supporting victims of malicious verbal attack, so it is time for us to also do our part to make the internet world a clean and peaceful place.